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Father’s expression would have been very enjoyable under other circumstances. He was doing his best to control it, but Tyrion knew him well enough to tell that he had been taken completely off his guard, and was also in a towering rage. There was nothing quite as satisfying as vindictive pleasure. If only that pleasure didn’t seem uncomfortably likely to involve Tyrion’s own painful immolation.

“She then had the lords slaughtered, and her dragons burned much of the city,” Varys said, thus concluding his very dramatic narrative of how Daenerys Targaryen had sacked Astapor and made off with an entire army’s worth of elite Unsullied crack troops. He laid down an illustration of charred towers and city walls, done by a skilled hand in pen and ink from a good vantage point, although at what had clearly been a healthy distance. “She is now marching for Yunkai, which has a substantial fleet. By a generous estimate, she could be landing in Westeros within a year.”

“I thought you said the dragons were small!” Joffrey said to Father loudly, a panicky edge in his voice. Father ignored him; he was glaring down at the picture in outrage.

“They are, your Grace,” Varys said, stepping into the silence. “That…does not seem to be stopping them.”

Tyrion glanced around the table; Joffrey wasn’t the only one who was deeply alarmed. Cersei was wearing a cool mask of unconcern, too carefully maintained, and Jaime had come around to stand by Father’s chair and study the picture, his jaw so tight that the lines were as sharp-edged as iron. Lord Mace was darting uneasy looks around the table, and Uncle Kevan just said to Father straight on, “How can we beat her?”

Father didn’t immediately answer. The many difficulties laid themselves out for consideration: they were still at war with half the realm, and significant portions of the remainder hated them passionately. Daenerys could find allies all over the continent if she did any looking whatsoever: in the North, in the riverlands, in the stormlands; in Dorne or even in the Iron Islands. Too many potential places to land, too many potential places to raise more men and supply. And a year wasn’t enough time to close all those doors.

Tyrion shook his head a little and said, “Unorthodox problems require unorthodox solutions.” Everyone looked at him except Father, but even he was listening. “Let’s make peace with Robb Stark.”

Father’s head did come up then. “What?” Joffrey said, a snarling, while Cersei demanded, “Have you lost your mind?” Even Uncle Kevan said in irritation, “Stark is beaten.”

There were various other noises of bewildered outrage; Tyrion let them settle down. “Stark is not beaten,” he said. “We now can beat him. That’s not the same thing. We’ll still have to spend our men and our time and our money to get the job done, and not to upset anyone, but if you recall, virtually all of us thought he was beaten on previous occasions, and it turned out he wasn’t. And even if everything goes as smoothly as possible, we’ll be left with the most significant disadvantage of all: if we beat him, he’ll be dead.”

“Is that a joke?” Joffrey said, standing up. “I want him dead! I want his head on a spike!”

“And Daenerys Targaryen undoubtedly wants all of our charred corpses in a smoldering pile at her feet—including his,” Tyrion said. “So maybe we shouldn’t get rid of the best general in all of Westeros right before she invades us.”

Everyone else started talking at once, but Tyrion ignored them all. Father had sat back in his chair, studying him across the table with a narrow frown; Tyrion looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. Father would have enjoyed killing Robb Stark, of course, but it really wasn’t worth it when instead they could just pack him off to his kennel in the North, and keep him safely tucked away for future use. For the very minor cost, which Tyrion didn’t count as one, of handing over his sister, instead of marching her to the altar with him.

After a moment, Father lifted a hand, quelling the furore, and said to Tyrion shortly, “You’ll take Sansa Stark to Riverrun, to pay our debt for Jaime’s release, and bring the Stark boy to heel.”

“He keeps the title, we keep the Riverlands, and he swears to help protect the Continent against invasion from outside foes,” Tyrion said.

Father gave a grunt of dismissive approval, yes of course, then looked at Uncle Kevan. “Move the mustering point south of the Blackwater. You’ll go and take Storm’s End instead. Destroy any of the stormlords who refuse to forswear Stannis, and replace them with loyal knights. Grandmaester, you’ll send a raven to the Vale and tell Lysa Arryn that we’ve made peace with her nephew, and if she wants her boy to live, he’ll bend the knee as well. And so long as the realm is unified, we can hold the dragons off.”

#

Robb had shut himself up in the study at Riverrun for the third day in a row, still trying—without much luck—to find a way to word his letter so that it had enough groveling to satisfy Walder Frey on reading it, without so much that he couldn’t bear to write it. He looked over his latest attempt and sighed and had to crumple the sheet entirely; he’d now written upon it crosswise, three ways on both sides, and there just wasn’t any way to fit in another try. He threw it in the fire and sat back in the chair and stared at the ceiling, pushing his hands into his hair. He was starting to think he’d have to ask Mother to draft it instead. Or maybe to write it entirely, and then give it to him to sign with his eyes closed and his nose held.

He scrubbed his hands against his skull a little and sat back up again and took a fresh sheet, but before he put more on it than To Walder Frey, Lord of the Crossings, from Robb Stark, King in the North, Greetings, Grey Wind lifted his head from the hearth where he was sleeping and gave a low whine, his ears twisting to listen to a noise from inside the keep. Robb put down his pen and stood at once, grateful for any excuse. When he opened the door to the corridor and came out, the page coming to get him was running so hard the boy couldn’t stop in time and ran right into him; Robb had to catch the boy up off the ground. “Careful there,” he said, trying not to laugh at the boy—a Tully, one of his third cousins, he thought; the poor lad was crimson and stammering as Robb put him back on his feet. “It’s all right. What is it?”

“It’s your sister, your Grace,” the boy said. “Your sister’s here!”

Robb stared at him and then he was running down the corridor at full speed himself, Grey Wind bounding ahead with a loud whuffing as he caught the scent, long lost but never forgotten, and they burst into the courtyard together and found the Lannister party dismounting under a flag of parley. Sansa was already standing out in front of them, looking anxiously around at all the doors of the keep, elegant in a gown of silk and fur and her hair shining in woven braids, grown so tall and beautiful he hardly knew her for the same little girl who’d left Winterfell, three years before, when they’d still had a home, a father, a family.

Then she turned and her eyes fixed on his face, and in their mirror he saw himself the same way, with three years of war and sorrow written on him. And then the years were all gone and they were running towards each other; her face was crumpling into tears, and he had her swung up into his arms and was crushing her against him as she buried her face against his shoulder and sobbed, clinging, a part of his heart come back.

There were footsteps coming out of the keep behind him; he heard Mother cry out and he let Sansa go tumbling into her arms, tears streaming down both their faces as she pressed their cheeks together, gulping sobs and wrapping Sansa up, clutching at her head. Talisa had come outside with her; she came to Robb’s side, her quiet smile shining up at him in happiness for their joy, and he beamed at her helplessly.

Then he wiped the tears from his own face, taking a deep breath, and put aside being the brother, so he could be the king; he turned to give formal greetings to the escort, and paused in surprise: the horses had been taken by the ostlers, and Tyrion Lannister himself was at the head of the party. “Lord Tyrion,” he said, wondering. “It’s kind of you to have brought my sister yourself.” It came out half a question. 

“Your sister,” Tyrion said, with an inclination of his head, “and—peace terms, I hope,” as Robb stared down at him. 

#

Robb made himself follow all the forms of courtesy: he had the servants bring the bread and salt, and welcomed Tyrion and his men as guests; then he offered meat and drink, and a chance to rest, but he was inwardly glad when Tyrion accepted for his men but not himself. “Why don’t we have a chat first,” he said. “The terms aren’t very complicated, but I expect you’ll want some time to think them through, and if I lie down now, I won’t be getting up until morning.”

“As you wish,” Robb said, with private gratitude, and took him to the lord’s study, off the great library; he poured wine, and composed his face, and sat down to listen, and then did his best not to gape like a bewildered yokel as Tyrion laid out the terms that he was offering. It was hard going.

When he’d finished, Robb said slowly, utterly at sea, “I thank you for bringing these terms, my lord. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll take counsel with my lords before I answer,” mostly to snatch some time to make any sense of them. 

“Yes, of course,” Tyrion said. “And I’m sure you’re anxious to be with your sister after all this time. To be honest, I’m rather anxious for a hot bath and a night in a real bed myself.”

“The hospitality of Riverrun is yours,” Robb said, and after he’d seen Tyrion shown to an appropriate chamber and provided with his dinner and his bath, he also gave quiet orders for him and his men to be watched closely, in case they were here with some scheme to open the doors of the keep to an invasion in the night. At least that would have made some sense, instead of none.

“They agree to recognize you?” Mother said again, just as bewildered herself, when he’d gathered back in the library with his family to tell them the terms and talk them over; she was sitting together side by side with Sansa on a bench, still holding her hand, as though she couldn’t bear to let her go again.

“Aye,” Robb said. “The Riverlands must go back to the Iron Throne, but they’ll recognize the independence of the North, with the border at Moat Cailin. He’s promised amnesty to all the riverlords who bend the knee, and an open border for trade.”

They were all silent together, until Talisa burst out, as if she’d tried to stifle herself while they considered, but couldn’t hold back any longer, “Robb—why wouldn’t you accept? Surely these are good terms?”

Edmure darted a look at her and back, as if he’d been privately wondering the same thing, but the Blackfish snorted, and Robb said grimly, “They’re too good. My army’s down to eleven thousand men. I’ve had to yield all our positions in the Westerlands and release most of my prisoners. The Lannisters have the Tyrells; they’re mustering an army nearly eighty thousand men strong. The question’s not why we wouldn’t take the terms. The question’s why they’d give them to us. They know nothing of…our other hopes.”

“Lord Tywin surely fears the damage we’d do to his army, even in falling,” Uncle Edmure said after a moment.

But Mother shook her head. “What does he care about their lives? He has his son back, and he’s secure in the Red Keep. Why wouldn’t he spend forty thousand men to kill us, if it took so many? It must be a trap of some kind, some plot he means to lay against you.”

“What were the other terms, Robb?” Sansa asked.

Robb jerked his hand a little, dismissive; they weren’t anything. “You can’t marry a southern lord, and I must still keep the oath of the Warden of the North. That’s all. “

“That’s it, then,” Sansa said at once, with so much certainty Robb stared at her. “They want you to keep the Warden’s oath.”

“What?” he said.

“That’s the only part of the terms that they couldn’t get by killing you,” Sansa said. “So that must be what they really want.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Robb said, bewildered. “If an army of Wildlings comes over the Wall, we must fight them anyway; they won’t just walk through the North to attack the south.”

“But if it didn’t matter, they wouldn’t make it part of the terms,” Sansa said. “The oath of the Warden isn’t just about enemies from the North, is it?”

“No,” Robb said slowly. “To defend all Westeros against enemies from without.”

Sansa nodded. “They must think someone else is going to invade Westeros. That’s why they want to make peace with you.”

“Just to keep from having to finish us off?” Robb said.

“Maybe,” Sansa said. “But I think the real reason is to get you. That’s what the peace would give them, that they can’t get any other way.” She shook her head a little impatiently, seeing his perplexity. “You don’t know how they talk about you, the Lannister knights and officers who came back from the war. I’ve heard them talking to the Tyrell men about the battles you’ve won. They would play them out together, trying to learn from them. They say you can’t be beaten in the field; they’d argue if it would be enough to outnumber you seven to one. That’s what they’re after.”

“I must be flattered, I suppose,” Robb said, still dubious, but he was thinking it over. “If they did have some real reason to fear an invasion from abroad,” he said slowly, “it could be worth it for them—not only to get me, but to end the whole war as quick as they could. They beat Stannis, but many of the stormlords still haven’t bent the knee. So they’ll take the army they were making ready to destroy us, and go pacify the stormlands—and meanwhile they know that I’ll deal with the Greyjoys for them, to avenge their raids on the North,” he went on, beginning to believe it. “And once we’ve made peace, Aunt Lysa will surely come round; then they’ve got the Vale back as well. And if an invader comes, they’ll have the right to demand that I bring the armies of the North, which otherwise they’d have to spend their own men to destroy, to come and help them.”

“They can’t imagine that you would fight for them, Robb,” Edmure said in protest. “For Joffrey?”

Robb grimaced, but Mother said, “The more important question is who they would expect you to fight against.”

He still half doubted if it was true, but when he went to speak with Tyrion again, the next morning, and they sat down together, Robb took a chance: he thought at least he’d find out if it wasn’t true. “You’ve offered us generous terms,” he said. “And I’m likely to accept them. But before I do, I must ask you to tell me who it is that you want my help to defend Westeros against.”

Tyrion Lannister eyed him sidelong, but there wasn’t any confusion in his face: the question hadn’t puzzled him. “Fair enough,” he said. “Daenerys Targaryen.”

Robb hadn’t been able to think of anyone to expect—the Dothraki? A great raid from the slave cities? A company of sellswords?—but he was still taken by surprise. “The Mad King’s daughter? And you really think she’s going to find an army somewhere to invade us?”

“She already has one,” Tyrion said. “Four weeks ago, she bought eight thousand Unsullied slave-fighters in Astapor. And then she turned them around and used them to sack the city, while her dragons burned half of it to the ground.”

Robb stiffened a little, staring at him. “Her father’s daughter, then,” he said after a moment.

“It would seem so,” Tyrion said. “By our last report, she’s now marching on Yunkai—which has a substantial fleet of transports. More than enough ships to take eight thousand Unsullied across the Narrow Sea. She might land as soon as next year, or two perhaps.”

The first surprise was over: so Sansa had been right after all. Robb said slowly, “All right. Yes. In return for the freedom of the North, I’ll pledge to help you against her. If she lands, I’ll come south and join in the defense—and I’ll go home again after,” he added, dry. “But I’ve three conditions.”

Tyrion spread a hand open, inviting him to go on.

“First: you’ll spare the Riverlands the crown’s taxes for five years,” Robb said. “They’ve borne the brunt of this war, and the smallfolk have taken harm from both sides. My uncle and his lords must have some time to repair towns and keeps, and get in one last autumn harvest, or their smallfolk will be starving in the winter; they’re already going hungry.”

Tyrion was listening with a thoughtful frown, and then he said, “And you don’t want us to make good our losses by taxing the recalcitrant lords who followed you.” Robb inclined his head. “Let me suggest an alternative. We already have grain caravans coming north from the Reach. They were going to supply our army. Instead, they can provide immediate relief to the hungry in the Riverlands, and replenish their winter stores. And we’ll give them two years of tax relief instead. I can’t really promise more than that: if there is an invasion, we’re going to need them to do their share.”

Robb nodded, a little surprised and glad. “That will do.” 

“Excellent,” Tyrion said. “And the rest?”

“I want my father’s sword back,” Robb said. “You’ll not keep a trophy of his murder.”

Tyrion grimaced a little, and Robb repressed a flaring of anger. His hands clenched underneath the table, out of sight. He knew Tywin Lannister had long wanted a Valyrian blade for his house. If the Lannisters wouldn’t give it back—that wasn’t something he could refuse this peace over, but he’d want to. But after a moment, Tyrion said, “All right. I’ll be honest, I’m going to have to do some fast talking to my father to pry it out of his hands, but—we’ve only been able to give you back one of your sisters. So call it paying the rest of the debt we owe, for my brother coming home.”

Robb let his breath out slow, trying to conceal his relief. “And last—though I’ll come south and defend your realm, I’ll come as an allied king, not as your vassal. I will never,” he went on, low and tight, “take a single order from Joffrey. And he’d better keep his Kingsguard close when he’s around me.”

Tyrion put on a grave face, but there was something like amusement in his eyes. “I’m sure it will deeply grieve my beloved nephew not to be able to personally lead the defense of the realm. But much as we’ll all feel the sad lack of his inspirational leadership, if it’s him or you—we’ll take you,” he finished dryly, and when Robb eyed him sidelong, Tyrion shrugged up at him. “It’s not as though we like him, you know. I don’t think even his mother likes him. We’re just stuck with him.”

Robb couldn’t quite laugh, but he felt his shoulders ease a little, some of the anger flowing back out. “Then,” he said, slowly, almost not believing the words as he said them, “it seems we have an accord.”

“It does look that way, doesn’t it,” Tyrion said. “Your Grace.” And he held out his hand. Robb stared at it a moment more before he took it with his own, and shook on the bargain.

Robb went to the Great Hall, where he’d asked his bannermen to assemble; there were servants and men at arms loitering along the way in all the corridors nearby, the word already spreading, and when Robb went inside and said, “My lords, the war is over,” the cheer that began in the room went spilling over through the halls and out the windows, men pouring into the courtyard, shouting, “The King in the North! The King in the North!” in exalted voices, a ringing sound wild with triumph, and Robb found himself breaking into a helplessly wide smile, finally beginning to believe it himself, and Lord Umber gave a shout and charged him and seized him with both hands, and half a dozen of his other lords converged on him as well, and together they heaved him up on their shoulders and carried him out into the roaring crowd.

#

“Is it just me, or do the Northmen seem to have more fun than we do?” Tyrion said to Bronn wistfully. Robb had prudently ringed their seats at the high table with a wall of his most reliable men—to make sure no one with a lingering thirst for Lannister blood tried to take a last opportunity to satisfy it—and there wasn’t much variety in the food, but wine was flowing and platters of choice bits of roast were being sent over to their side of the table on a regular basis, and they had an excellent view of the festivities: the aisles were full of dancing and laughter and cheerful drunkenness. Robb himself had spent more time down at other tables than at his own, clapping his men on the shoulders, sitting down and speaking with them, sharing tales and jokes, dancing with some of the ladies of the court or—as the night wore on—joining in the outbursts of extremely vigorous Northern men’s dances, stumbling out of them laughing and sweating to collapse on a bench and take another cup of wine, grinning at his men.

“They’re not ruled by a sour fucking cunt, are they,” Bronn said.

“How true,” Tyrion said. “Regardless of whether you mean my nephew or my father.” He drained his cup and got up to risk going a few seats out of his protective wall to speak to Sansa, who was sitting with her mother and Robb’s wife. Catelyn threw a cold look in his direction, but it softened a bit when Sansa smiled at him and gave him her hand to kiss. “I’m glad to see you smiling again, my lady,” he told her. “It’s been too long.”

“Thank you, Lord Tyrion,” she said. “And for this.” She gestured out at the room.

He frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“This is your doing,” she said, and he blinked at her. “I don’t believe your father would have thought of peace with Robb, and I know Joffrey and the queen wouldn’t have. I know why he’s done it—but someone had to give him the idea. And I’m sure that was you. Am I wrong?”

“No,” he said, bemused. Catelyn was gazing at Sansa in surprise herself, almost a little dismayed, as if she didn’t quite know what to make of this grown woman she’d got back in the place of the child she’d lost. “I suppose you’re right.”

He did take the precaution the next morning of making courtesy farewell calls on some of the senior Northern bannermen, which gave him the opportunity to drop a pointed hint to Lord Bolton to exercise some self-restraint for the moment. “Let him know he’ll have his chance in the end,” Father had said. “After we’ve dealt with the Targaryen girl.”

Tyrion didn’t especially want Bolton to have that chance—he seemed distinctly like a sour cunt himself, even on short acquaintance—but that would have to be Robb’s problem, not his. And at least Robb would have a few years to grow up in before he had to prove capable of dealing with it. Unless, of course, Daenerys Targaryen did ship herself over and burned them all to death before then. There were always these little silver linings available when you looked for them.

Chapter Text

No one was eager to rise early the next morning, but by the afternoon, Robb saw Tyrion Lannister and his escort off, going back to King’s Landing. Uncle Edmure and the other riverlords had bent the knee to him, as Joffrey’s proxy, and sworn their oaths. The Northmen were making ready for the next day’s march still in high spirits, despite their aching heads. Robb went through the camps of his bannermen outside the walls to see that everything was in good order; they’d march at first light. March for the North; march for home.

It was still almost impossible to believe that the war was over. Robb felt he’d have to relearn how to breathe, how to be, all over again. He’d been at war so long, he hardly remembered anything else, and what he did remember seemed a childish game he’d played as a boy, as though peace and ordinary life were a fairy story. The only refuge he’d found in all the last three years had been Talisa’s arms, and her voice reminding him ceaselessly that it was the war that was wrong: that he’d gone off the road into a dreadful wilderness, and his duty was to find a way out of it and back home, for himself and his family and his men.

And now it seemed he’d done it, but he was glad for the month’s time it took to get there, a steady but not a forced march north on the kingsroad. It helped to make it all real, and when at last he saw the tall spires of Moat Cailin break the horizon, Robb pulled up to one side of the line of march and paused a while looking at it. Mother and Sansa rode up to join him, and when Mother closed her eyes, tears running down her face, Robb silently put his arm around her shoulders, and held her against him while she wept for them both, remembering in sharp sorrow that he hadn’t done it, for more than half their family was shattered and gone.

And even though he was done with the war in the south, there was war in the North ahead of him, for he still had the ironborn to deal with. Bolton’s bastard had taken Winterfell back for him, but Lord Glover’s keep was still occupied, the last they’d heard, and many other villages upon their western coast had suffered badly from raids. He knew he’d have to go west to fight them, though he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to make himself leave home again.

But once he actually rode through the gates of Winterfell, it became far easier than he’d expected to go. He felt all the absences like a sore tooth, an aching misery that came back unexpectedly over and over, every day. It wasn’t just Father gone, it wasn’t even just Bran and Rickon and Arya, as if that wouldn’t have been far more than enough for misery. Ser Rodrick and Jory both dead. Septa Mordane killed in King’s Landing. The stablemaster Nery killed, smith Mikken as well; half the household it seemed, as though Theon had wanted to murder everyone who had ever said a word to him, anyone who might have remembered his life there, as if he could wipe it away.

Even Maester Luwin was gone, his tower standing empty; they didn’t find any signs to show what had happened to him, and no one left could tell them. Lord Manderly’s maester had been training a successor for five years, and he’d been generous enough to send the man to fill the vacancy at Winterfell instead; Robb was grateful for Maester Wornos, but it was still dreadfully wrong to go up to the tower and find someone else there; to hear the familiar clank of the maester’s chain, with an unfamiliar footstep behind it.

And Winterfell was only half-familiar itself after everything Theon had spoiled—much of it for pure spite, as far as Robb could see: the glassgardens shattered, wooden buildings burnt, stone ones partly knocked down. Mother had already called up an army of smallfolk from the winter town, but even with fifty hands, they would be a year or more just sweeping up; they were already making a great midden heap of broken glass and splinters and gravel outside the walls of the keep. Robb almost felt ashamed to be going away and leaving the keep in his mother’s hands, and Sansa and Talisa’s, with so much work to see it made whole again.

“And I’ll miss you,” Talisa said softly, lying in bed with him the night before he left, pillowed upon his chest, their legs entwined, their breath slowing; they’d made love for a long time, both of them wanting it to keep going, and now her hand was still spread wide upon his chest, over his heart, as if she could make it into a shield to protect him.

“I will too,” he said. “But I’ll be glad to keep you well away from the battlefields from now on. No matter how grateful my men were to have your clever hands along.” He took her hand and kissed it. “And how grateful I was, too,” he added, with a nip at her fingertips.

She managed a laugh that he could tell she didn’t quite feel, and leaned up to kiss him. “Just be careful,” she said. “You have to come back all in one piece if I won’t be there to sew you back together.” She was smiling, but there was fear lurking behind it.

He smiled back at her and stroked his fingers through her long hair, down her back. But after she closed her eyes and fell asleep upon his shoulder, he let his head fall back and sighed a little. He didn’t want her to see his own worry, when she had so much of her own. But with the urgent weight of the war now lifted from his shoulders, he felt a sudden clear sense of the narrowness of his escape. He’d chastised his uncle for losing them two hundred men with his adventure at the Stone Mill, but he’d lost the Freys and the Karstarks all by himself, and he’d done it in the teeth of good counsel.

Mother still disapproved of his marriage, and she wasn’t alone; half of his bannermen muttered, and the other half openly spoke out. They’d have disapproved anyway of his marrying a foreign woman, and one who brought nothing to the North. But far worse than that was that he’d broken his promise, the word of a Stark.

He’d wondered sometimes before how his father could have strayed from his own vows. It was the only time Robb knew of that he’d ever broken his word. But Robb hadn’t wondered anymore after he’d met Talisa, in the midst of his own war. He’d tried to resist; he’d tried to decide—he had decided—not to see her again. He thought she’d decided the same herself: there had been long stretches, days and weeks, when he hadn’t even glimpsed her from a distance, as though she’d made a deliberate effort to be at the far side of the camp, or to keep to the healers’ tents.

But it hadn’t taken her out of his mind, because it hadn’t just been lust that had put her there in the first place. He’d kept hearing her reproofs in his head over and over, even while he’d laid out his plans of battle and all the men around him nodded their bloodthirsty approval.

And she’d not come back to him for lust herself; only when there hadn’t been enough supplies for the wounded in her care, to ask for more. She’d avoided his eyes, even while asking, and then he’d come around the table and stood near her, and for a moment she’d looked up at him and he’d felt her yearning towards him. She’d dropped her gaze at once again, but color had come into her cheeks, and he could gladly have taken her in his arms right then; he almost had. And after that…she hadn’t avoided him so thoroughly, and he hadn’t avoided her at all, both of them dancing like moths closer to the other’s flame, until they’d been unable not to close the last little space left between them.

Of course his lords wouldn’t have minded at all if he’d only taken her as a lover. But that he couldn’t bear to do. For it had mattered to her. She’d smiled at him a little tremulous, after they’d come together the first time, and she’d not said a word, but he’d known that she was ashamed, of having yielded. That was what she’d felt, after the first blaze of heat had gone: shame, instead of joy, of relief, as he had. She’d been raised to guard her virtue, and to feel that the honor of her house was bound up in it. She’d told him that she’d gone so far away from Volantis because she hadn’t wanted to bring shame upon her family, even only what they considered shame. How could he take what she’d given him, the sweet pure water she’d poured into his cup to let him wash away a little of the blood and grime and filth of war, and leave her to bear the cost of it alone?

It would have been a worse dishonor than breaking his promise to Walder Frey, or so he’d told himself. Just as he’d told himself he had to put Rickard Karstark to death, instead of making him hostage and letting him take the black after the war was over. And perhaps that had been true. And yet with the half-unwanted help of distance, he now also felt, with a bleak coldness, that those had been choices, with a high price upon them, and one he hadn’t fully paid.

He’d not only lost more than half his army, he’d brewed doubt among the men he had left, who had begun to wonder if their king was a fool. Robb knew that he was lucky that he hadn’t needed to find out how many of those men would have kept following him into battle, if Walder Frey had refused his aid, and he’d had to find some way to take on that enormous army the Lannisters had been making ready for his doom. Daenerys Targaryen had likely saved his life by sacking Astapor so dramatically, unless he’d somehow been able to prove that it wasn’t enough to outnumber him seven to one.

He supposed that now he ought to be thinking about how to take her on, but he found it hard to make that threat real inside his head. The Mad King’s daughter had brought back the dragons, she was marching to conquer them all with fire and blood: it was a tale out of the history books, something that had happened to men long ago, not a battle for their time. Still less a battle for him to fight, and he didn’t know what to think of what Sansa had said about how the Lannisters spoke of him. Tyrion had all but confirmed it, because why else would they have made such a bargain with him? But to himself, Robb felt anything but invincible. He saw a chain of mistakes, one after another; the whole war looked like nothing else.

He’d shown Tywin that he could outfight him in the field, so Tywin had simply stopped meeting him there. Robb had dwelt on it over many of the long nights of the march, and he’d slowly realized that his campaign in the Westerlands had been nothing but a waste, from start to finish. He’d taken one keep after another, but all his victories hadn’t mattered. He’d gained nothing except money, which he’d spent again right away in feeding all his prisoners, and it had gone into the pockets of the farmers and tradesmen of the Westerlands, where Tywin could get it straight back out again with taxes.

Oh, he could have made it matter. He could have put his prisoners to the sword, as Bolton had advised. He could have gone burning keeps and towns, and salting fields; he could have flooded mines and butchered herds. He could have done everything that Tywin himself had done, when he’d invaded the Riverlands, and if he’d done those things, Tywin would have been forced to march out and meet him. But he hadn’t, so instead Tywin had let him waste his own strength and supply, and in the end, he’d just been and gone again. And meanwhile he’d left his home undefended—his little brothers undefended—and they’d paid the price for his foolishness.  

Robb knew he had to do better; he was determined to do better. He had gained a little room to breathe for now: the joy of bringing back the crown would lift him in the eyes of all the North for a while. But he had to use that time of grace, to make himself truly a king. He had to deal with the ironborn quickly, before the first glow of triumph had fully died down. If he could only do that, he’d write over some of those foolish mistakes he’d made, in the minds of his bannermen. They’d forgive his marriage as a young man giving way to lust, especially if the child in Talisa’s belly were a son: they’d be glad for him to have an heir, and forget to mutter that she was a foreigner.

Mother would also reach out to the Karstarks in his absence, and try to ease some of the bad blood there. She meant to try and broker a match between Alys Karstark and Umber’s younger son, Beric, to put a trusted man in Karhold, and give rich gifts for the wedding as a wordless apology. If Robb was able to settle matters with the ironborn in the meantime, he hoped that would settle them as well.

But everything depended on that. If he couldn’t defend his own realm, then instead of writing over his mistakes, he’d write over his own success instead. His own men would begin to think his battlefield victories only lucky accidents, and then it wouldn’t matter what the Lannisters thought of him, or whether he could beat the dragon queen’s army. He wouldn’t get the chance to do it, or have the time to rebuild his family. He saw that plain enough.

He’d brought home a crown for the North, and ambition had come in its train. Every last one of his bannermen had eyed Sansa thoughtfully on the way home. Robb wondered if Tywin had deliberately meant to give him that trouble, by insisting he couldn’t marry her to a southern lord. If Robb did make a match for her now, it would be as much as to name his heir and perhaps his own replacement: they’d turn to that man instead, if they stopped having faith in him. But if he didn’t make that match, and he still lost their faith…it would be even worse: his bannermen would fight one another to kill him, and then take Sansa and claim the crown with her.

He saw the first gleam of those thoughts around him even as he rode west to drive the ironborn back into the sea. He hadn’t had trouble raising men for the work. Bolton had volunteered himself and his men to the cause; so too had Lord Dormuth, who had brought his eldest son along, and Lord Cerwyn, who’d brought his younger. All of them had keeps more to the east, which hadn’t been preyed upon, and good reason to go home and make ready for winter. But they had even better reason to ride with him: to show their own valor and skill to the North, and to be ready to step forward into his place if he faltered.

And it seemed the ironborn had as little taste to meet him in the field as the Lannisters did. By the time they were halfway to Deepwood Motte, Lord Glover had a raven from his family telling him that the ironborn had abandoned the keep and fled over the sea back to Pyke. Robb received the news grimly, and more grimly let Lord Glover take his men and go marching home, as little as he could afford to spare one of the lords he did trust. But that was faith he had to repay. “You’ll have hard work to rebuild as well, I know,” Robb said. “I don’t know how much we’ll be able to recover from the ironborn of what they’ve plundered, but what I can, I’ll send you.”

That left him with little choice but to take the fight to the ironborn over the sea, and Robb knew that was a fight he’d be hard pressed to win—and his ambitious lords knew it too. All three of them expressed their doubts loudly when they reached the western coast and he ordered the men to begin hewing down trees and making longboats of their own. “Forgive me, your Grace, but the ironborn likely have eyes in the fishing villages,” Lord Bolton said politely—choosing a moment where he had an audience of a dozen smaller bannermen. “We should move the construction further inland, or they will raid us before we even get the ships in the water.”

“I’ll consider it,” was all the reply Robb gave him, and answered the rest of his lords’ similar protests mildly for the next month, while the timber was cut and hauled, and thirty longboat hulls began to take shape, lined up along the banks of the Coldwhistle as neat as anyone could like, as if put out at market and inviting a buyer with deep pockets. Fishermen and small traders and locals alike could have a look at them for the trouble of walking ten minutes inland along the river from Whistling Wind, the nearest town. There was even a hill just overlooking the construction docks, so it was easy to see how far along they were.

Robb arranged the timing carefully: they were roughed out by stages, in groups of five, to keep them all in the same state. He didn’t let the workmen finish the last set until there was a full moon coming, and the promise of several clear nights in a row, and when at last he got it, early that morning he had the men put up masts in all the boats at once. “But your Grace,” the chief boatwright said, bewildered, “I must have two weeks to fit them all. We can’t just—prop a stick up and call it a mast. They won’t hold in the wind.”

“But I don’t need them to hold in the wind,” Robb said. “So that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

Afterwards he called his lords and officers together in his tent. There was a restive noise among them as they gathered, sharing their murmurs of disapproval to one another, and then Robb said, “My lords, it’s time for you to hear the plan of battle, and I trust you’re all ready to pay sharp attention. I hope we’ll be fighting this very night,” and a silence fell through the tent as they stared at him. He grinned at them all, with wolf’s teeth bared. “Since our neighbors like Northern hospitality so much, I thought I’d invite them to come and have some more of it, before we go try a taste of theirs,” and listened with satisfaction as the noise came back in a rising tide of belated understanding, knowing that now they remembered the victories he’d given them before, as they took the scent of another one ahead.

All he needed was the enemy, and his well-laid table brought them almost to the hour. The moon had only just risen, and he was standing with the volunteers of the vanguard when the blue lantern blinked into light, a mile down the river, and went out again. His stomach tightened, waiting, and then it blinked once more; then a third time, and he pounded Martyn Cerwyn on the shoulder with a clenched fist in ferocious delight, and waved the men forward silently: they all crouched waiting behind the empty hulls in their heavy dark cloaks, their faces smudged with dirt. There was barely a sound to break the night but their breathing, and Grey Wind’s ears pricked up at the first soft splashing of oars, wood creaking, as the ironborn came rowing up the river, in thirty longboats of their own, and the moonlight glinted on their breastplates and swords.

#

Robb walked along the line of his ships the next morning, doubled now in numbers. Some of them had taken a little damage, stuck full of arrows and spears, and some scorched from the fire: he’d left three false hulls at the best landing place on the shore, made of half rotted trees and filled with kindling and pitch, and he’d had them fired when the ironborn ships had drawn up alongside them, to give his archers light to work by.

But even the damaged boats looked seaworthy enough to him, and the boatwrights agreed. “Three weeks to tidy them up, and make the others ready as well, your Grace,” the chief man said, climbing out of the last one after pounding on its seams.

“Good,” Robb said, a little savage. He knew he’d have willing men at his back now, even to face the ironborn at sea.

But two weeks later, before he could launch the assault, another longboat came sailing into the harbor at Whistling Wind, under a flag of parley. Robb rode down the river to meet with the ironborn envoy, trying to decide what terms he’d even be willing to take. It was hard to imagine any promises the ironborn could make him that he’d believe, and he didn’t mean to ride home to Winterfell only to have to turn back around again as soon as he’d got there, having been made to look like a fool.

The headman had cleared out his house, and put a carved wooden chair in the study; Robb had his men take out the other chairs and sat to receive the ironborn captain armed, with Grey Wind at his side: they’d earned no right to a more courteous welcome. “Send him in,” Robb said, and blinked when a woman entered instead, wearing breeches and a heavy jerkin of well-worn leather over a shirt open halfway down her bosom, her hair pulled back and a mannish stride.

“I’m Yara Greyjoy,” she said. “So you’re the King in the North?” She eyed him up and down and snorted. “Men. It’s all, ‘he’s ten feet tall with teeth the length of your arm’ and what they mean is that you beat the shit out of them.  You’ll never catch them telling a woman about the important bits.”

“And what are those?” Robb said, and then glared when she looked him up and down again with open appreciation. “I’m glad you approve.”

“Me too,” she said unrepentantly. “Should make things more fun. You’re not going to get offended, are you?” she added. “Not like the first thing you looked at wasn’t my breasts.”

“Hard not to notice when you have your shirt open to your waist,” he fired back.

She only smirked back at him. “That’s why I’m wearing it like that.”

His mouth wanted to smile in answer, and it made him angry. “Is there something you wanted, that you thought they would help you get?” he said coldly.

“Yeah,” she said. “I want the Iron Islands. And I want you to give them to me.”

Robb had to admit, she had more gall than any ten men he’d ever met. She laid her plan out for him, impervious to his open stare of incredulity: her father was ailing, she said, and soon to pass away. If he’d give her his support, to be Lady of the Iron Islands, the first woman to rule them, then she’d bend the knee to him, as King in the North, instead of to Joffrey.

“It’s the only way you can get what you want from us,” she said. “If I marry any man, the first thing he’s got to do is raid the North some more, because now he’s got to prove he can beat you. If I don’t marry one, every cunt with a crew at his back will do the same, trying to make me take him. That’s why you had thirty fucking longboats come right up your arse to the slaughter. Everyone who could scrape together a crew thought he’d bring back your head and be king.” She sounded exasperated about it. “I told all those fuckers that if they thought you’d done something stupid, they were doing something stupid instead. But no. ‘Just a lucky boy,’” she mimicked. “Like a man of the sea has any business sneering at luck anyway.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t your idea, is that it?” he said. “I shouldn’t hold you responsible.”

“Hold me as responsible as you like,” she said. “I’m the one who took Deepwood Motte and raided half the villages up and down your coast. Why wouldn’t I? The only king my father bent the knee to was Robert Baratheon, and he’s dead, and you declared against his son, so what the fuck did we owe you? Not a thing. Not saying you should like it, but if you want someone to blame, go look in a mirror. You near enough opened up the gates for us.”

“This is meant to make me want to help you?” Robb said.

“Would you like it any better if I lied to you and told you I was very sorry?” she said. “I’m ironborn, not some salt-shore bitch who’s going to kiss your feet. I’m also not a fucking idiot, by the way, and I’ve been in charge of the harbor at Pyke.”

“Do you have many defenses in place, then?”  Robb said, coolly, wondering if she’d tell him.

“Nah,” she said. “I just took down all the docks. Now the only way to get to land is to beach your ships and run up onto the shore. Not easy for landsmen like you. And we’ve sunk sharp rocks capped with iron near most of the landing places. You’ll rip out the bottoms of half your boats coming in. If your men wear mail, they’ll drown in sight of shore, and if they don’t, they’ll die under our arrows while they’re trying to swim for it.”

His stomach tightened, because he thought it sounded right enough: getting to land was the part that had worried him the most. He could see it in his mind’s eye as she spoke: he’d lose half his men at least, and even if he could win with the ones who were left, he couldn’t afford to spend that many.

Yara shrugged. “Anyway, what good will it do you? If you win and kill my father and me, put one of your lords over us, he’ll have his throat slit in a week and you’ll have to come right back again.”

“So instead I should trust you, then?” he said, low and savage, angry more because he could tell that she was right about that, also. “The way I trusted Theon? I named him my brother, and he betrayed me. You think I’ll ever trust a Greyjoy again?”

“He wasn’t your brother,” Yara said, sharp and pugnacious. “He was my brother. What right did you have to trust him? Because your father stole him from us and kept him prisoner for seven years? You think that made you more his kin than we were?”

“I trusted him because I loved him!” Robb said, surging up out of the chair. “He wasn’t a prisoner in our house. We grew up side by side. Played together, learned together, fought together. He swore an oath to stand by me. And then he went to Winterfell and murdered my brothers and burned down my home.”

He was snarling at her by the end, his hands itching to take her by the throat, but she was looking at him narrowly, and her face had gone hard and unsmiling. “Well,” she said softly after a moment. “Seems I know something you don’t know.”

“And what’s that?” he said icily.

“Theon didn’t burn Winterfell.” He stared at her. “He should have. That’s what we do. We hit hard and fast, we start fires for cover, we grab what we want, we go home. That’s our way. But Theon didn’t want to burn your keep. He wanted to hold it. Calling himself Prince of Winterfell.” She shook her head. “Stupid. Thought he could be a Northern lord, with an ironborn crew at his back. He wouldn’t leave even when they knew your men were on the way. So his crew hit him over the head and ran for it. They didn’t burn anything.”

Robb didn’t want to believe her, and yet—  “Then who did?” he said.

Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “I’m guessing the same dogfucking cunt who sent us Theon’s cock and balls in a box three weeks later.”

Robb flinched back from her in shocked disgust. “What?”

She shrugged her shoulders still without looking away from him, as if she was trying to read something there that she wanted to know. “After we got it, I took my crew to Winterfell and went to get Theon out of your castle. He’d been tortured so badly that there wasn’t anything left of him. He didn’t know me, didn’t know his own name. I slit his throat myself to put him out of his misery, and took his body to the sea. My little brother.” She paused and asked, level, “Wasn’t that what you wanted done to him?”

Robb was staring at her; his heart was pounding. “What I wanted was to look that traitor in the face before I took his head. I ordered him sent to me alive.”

Yara kept looking at him another moment, then she gave a small grunt. “Guess your orders didn’t get followed then, did they.”

Robb had to turn away; he stalked to the window and stood there looking out at the sea wide-eyed, breathing hard, his fist clenched against the window frame. My bastard is at the Dreadfort, Bolton had said. Let me send him to take back Winterfell. Lord Bolton, who was ambitious. Who had the second most powerful fortress in the North—which for now had become the first, because Winterfell was half a ruin.

“Did Theon kill my brothers?” he said, without looking around.

Yara was silent a while. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I can’t say for sure he didn’t. He did string up those two burnt bodies. But none of our men saw him kill them. Made no sense anyway, even for him. They were worth more alive than dead.”

Robb found that he believed her. They had been worth more to the ironborn alive, as hostages that could have been used against him. Yara could have held him off from Pyke with a single blade, if she’d held it at Bran or Rickon’s throat. But dead—they meant he had no heir. No heir and a half-ruined fortress, a wolf without a pack or a den, vulnerable. To another lord of the North, who wanted to be king in his stead. He turned at last and looked back at Yara, rage throbbing in his throat. “Yes,” he said. “You knew something I didn’t know.”

She gave him a jerk of a nod. “If it means anything to you…Theon tried to talk my father into joining you. He called you his brother, too. But he might as well have thrown chum in the water. My father lost two sons to your father. He made Theon choose.” She paused and added, more heavily, “Your father shouldn’t have taken him at all. It was too late. Take him at seven, he’d have been yours. Take him at twelve, he’d’ve been ours. As it was…wolf jaws in one arm and kraken arms around the other. We tore him apart between us.”

And that as well felt true. Robb turned away and ran a hand over his face. He hadn’t thought of it so. Mother had told him not to trust Theon, and he hadn’t listened, and Theon had betrayed him. He hadn’t looked beyond that. But—Yara was right. He hadn’t had a right to expect Theon to betray his own kin for his sake. He knew what Father would have said about that. They’d spoken more than once of the duty a lord owed to his bannermen. To never ask any service that would dishonor you. Yet another mistake he’d made.

He turned back to Yara. Some of his anger against her had ebbed, but he still didn’t mean to make one more mistake, on top of the others. “And after you refused my offer of alliance, after you made Theon choose between us—now you want me to help you.”

“And I thought you’d given the orders to have Theon tortured to shreds, but I offered to bend the knee to you anyway.” She shrugged. “I’m trying to be the first woman to rule the ironborn. I don’t get the luxury of picking my allies, and I’m not looking for a handout. I’m bargaining with you, and you’ve got as much to gain as I do. If I talked all the rust-eaters on the Isles into giving me the crown without your help, you’d still get raiders up your arse, trying to force me to let them up my cunt. I’d rather let you. If you were the worst shithead in the world, you’re still going to leave and go back to Winterfell, five hundred miles away. And you can trust me, not because I’m such a nice, sweet girl,” her voice dry, “but because if I don’t have you behind me, I’m right back where I started. You help me, we all end up better off. No more raids for you, no invasion for us, I get the Seastone Chair, and you’ve got a fleet in your back pocket if you ever need to go sack Lannisport after all.”

She wasn’t a fool. And he too didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing his allies. Not with Bolton breathing down his neck, an enemy so close inside his guard, and one who couldn’t simply be destroyed just because Robb knew who he was, now. He felt again the sour twist in his stomach: he could have put Bolton to death for treason at once—if he hadn’t executed Lord Karstark. But he couldn’t do it now. Kill the next greatest of his bannermen, the man who commanded the largest force besides his own? Everyone would think he’d gone as furious as the Mad King, slaughtering among his own lords, and they’d band together to pull him down in the same way. Robb couldn’t do it, not until Bolton moved against him openly. Until then—he’d have to conceal his own knowledge of Bolton’s treachery, and try to secretly prepare a defense against him.

“And how many men is it you’d need from me, to back you for the seat?” he said, grimly.

“None,” she said. He blinked at her. “You think I could march a pack of Northmen onto Pyke and claim the Seastone Chair with them? My men would slit my throat. This isn’t a matter of a fight. I just need my men to know that I’m off the menu, and that if they fuck with me, you’ll come and kill them.”

“Am I to give you a letter?” Robb said, with a snort.

She rolled her eyes. “No, you twat. You have to give me a child.”

“What?” Robb said, and nearly asked her what child, and where he was meant to get it, and then she cocked her head at him and he understood what she was saying. “What?”

She shrugged as easily as if she were asking him for a drink of water. “Like I said. I’d rather let you.”

“You think I’m going to put aside my wife for you?” Robb said, almost more bewildered than angry.

“Why would I want you to put her aside?” she said. “I’m not looking to marry you. The child’s going to be my heir, not yours. But my men will know who fathered it, and they’ll stop trying to wave their cocks at me, because they know yours is bigger.” Robb couldn’t stop staring at her in helpless outrage, and she only huffed a little in impatience. “Why are you looking shirty? I’m the one who’s got to grow it for nine months and push it out of my cunt. For you, it’s half an hour’s work.” She paused and added, with a flick of her eyes up and down over him, “Or five minutes, I suppose.”

“Aye, I’m overcome with lust,” Robb said through his teeth. “I’m married. I’ve taken vows—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yara said, with a vast lolling movement of her head, and then she burst into forward motion and charged at him, and she’d pulled a knife out of her belt.

Robb jerked back and grappled for her wrist just in time: she’d struck right at his eyes. He was about to twist her arm to get it away, but she dropped the blade down into her other hand and stabbed it right at his belly, quick as a snake, and he had to seize her other hand as well. He squeezed the knife out of it clattering to the floor, but she shoved her leg between his and threw her weight over, and he had to fall with her or lose the grip on her hands, and then she squirmed one loose again anyway and got another knife out of the top of her boot.

She slashed it towards his face, so he had to lean back and let the other hand go, and when he came back and caught her by the arm instead, she just pulled loose the one tied lace of her jerkin and eeled out of it, leaving him with the leather in his hands as she twisted free and finished the movement back up on her feet, falling a few steps back from him into a crouch as he got up, and she was laughing at him.

“Yeah,” she said, tauntingly. “You’re such a good boy, aren’t you. Always do the right thing, always keep your word. Except that one time, when you really wanted to fuck a pretty girl.”

He glared at her, panting for breath. “Oh, you little—” and then she lunged at him again, and when he grappled for the knife, she let it go in mid-air so he was fumbling for it, and instead she darted her head in and bit his lip, seized it in her teeth and dragged them over it hard enough to sting, licking at him.

He seized her by the arms and shoved her back. She leaned in hard against his grip and hissed, “Fuck off, Stark. That was your father, not you. And he spent his life being a good dog for Robert Baratheon, but you’re the King in the North who made all the lions run and hide in their dens, so maybe you should stop trying to be him and start taking what you want.”

The shock of it almost took his breath away. “And you think I want you?” he snarled at her, rage and something he couldn’t name fighting in him.

“Oh, I know you do,” she said. “He’s not getting into it, is he?”

She jerked her head, and Robb looked involuntarily over—to where Grey Wind was lying curled on the floor, head on his paws watching with golden eyes, doing—absolutely nothing. He stared at him in a vague sense of betrayal, and then Yara thrust her body forward and wrenched herself around, squirming her hands out of his grip as she came round again, still standing inside the circle of his arms. Her hands came up and buried into his hair, taking a grip and pulling his head down to her mouth, her thigh sliding between his legs and another hand somehow—one of her hands from his head? sliding down the back of his hose to squeeze his ass, and then she was unbuckling his belt, she was biting at him again, devouring, twining herself around him.

His whole body was alive with lust and heat and hunger, wild and flooding through him, a river bursting the dam that kept it pent up. He shuddered all over, and then he was helping her lift off his mail shirt and pulling open her shirt and burying his face between her breasts, kissing them, sucking a nipple into his mouth, the taste of salt strong on her skin. She undid her own trousers and pushed them down. He went to the floor with her, shoving down his hose, and he lifted her up and slid her straight onto him as she groaned, so wet and hot around him. 

She pushed him down on his back and started to ride him, her body rising and falling, gasping for air. He moved with her, put his thumbs on her and rubbed her until she started to make noises and clench, and then he reared up and carried her over onto her back and started to fuck her hard and fast through it, every thrust so good, another sweet wave of pleasure rolling through his body and carrying everything else away, relief and release and the bright dazzle of climax crashing down: sunlight spilling over the water, and all the clouds broken.

When he finished, he slowly tipped himself off her and lay sprawled on his back panting with his eyes closed, swallowing against his dry mouth. He didn’t know what he was going to think or feel in a moment, and he didn’t want to find out yet. For now he only wanted to linger in the pure glowing animal satisfaction, hunger sated, thirst quenched; nothing in the world but his body.

But next to him, Yara laughed softly, and he craned his head up and saw her roll over onto her side and smirk at him. “There you go, Stark; you can get the idea when someone gives it to you on a platter,” she said. He tried to glare at her and then just gave up and let his head fall back, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t want it to have been good. He felt set adrift, as if she’d cast off his moorings and shoved him out of a safe harbor into the open sea. That was your father, not you.

And he still didn’t want that to be true, he wanted to protest it angrily, only he was lying here with sweat cooling on his body, another promise broken, and what he was feeling—what he felt, helplessly, was—smug. He’d just taken Pyke without losing even a single man, and oh, he’d liked it; it was less like sex than victory, only there’d been sex too. He wanted to go prancing out naked and howl at the moon like he’d marked out a fresh border for his territory.

He sighed at himself and sat up away from her, thrusting his hands into his hair. Yara lazily thumped his hip with her foot. “It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “For you, not just for me.”

“I know,” he said, grimly. He’d known even before, when she’d first been laying all of it out; he only hadn’t been able to admit it straight away; he’d needed to hold that line of defense, to try and stop himself. But the defense had been too weak to hold. “There are knives at my back, and I can’t afford to lose six thousand men taking Pyke. But…I love my wife. And this will hurt her.”

“Too bad she’s not here,” Yara said, and smirked up at him when he jerked his head round. “We could make it up to her together. See which one of us could show her a better time. Bet I’d win.” She laughed at his expression. “Stop trying to make a fucking tragedy out of it, Stark. What do you think you are, some cheating farmer who’s sneaking down the road to fuck his neighbor’s wife? I’m not here to have fun. I’ll take all the fun I can get in the world, because Mother’s tits, why not, but I’m trying to stay alive, and so are you. And if your head rolls, hers will be the very next one to hit the floor. Unless your wife’s a stupid twat, she already knows that, and if she is, you’d better explain it to her in small words.”

There wasn’t an argument he could make against it. The strange, hard realization was settling into his belly. He wasn’t his father. His father had ruled as an unquestioned Lord Paramount, without more than an occasional quiet grumble out of his bannermen—but only because he’d had a rich and powerful southron king at his back. And when the debt for that support had finally come due, it had taken Father’s head and the lives of three of his children to pay it off.

So now Robb wasn’t a lord; he was a king standing alone and beset, and he couldn’t afford to withhold anything from his struggles. Not even his own body, if he could find a way to turn it to advantage. If he’d married the daughter of a powerful house, they would be standing at his side right now, helping strengthen his rule. And since he hadn’t—he’d have to find every way he could to make up for it. Being a great general wasn’t going to be enough. He knew that already. Tywin Lannister had beaten him anyway. And even if he sailed to Pyke and defeated the ironborn, they would wound him too badly for him to survive. Like the mother direwolf in the woods, gored to death by the prey she’d brought down.

“But all the raids have to stop,” he told Yara. “None of this nonsense where you claim one captain’s gone rogue, or that longship’s a pirate vessel: all those small tricks your father kept playing on the rest of the lords of the realm, making excuses. Otherwise, to my bannermen, you’ve not bent the knee, you’ve seduced me into being a fool, and I can’t afford that, either.”

Yara grunted. “Fair enough. I’ll tell my men and make it stick.”

Robb nodded. “And no raids in the Riverlands, either. If there’s another war, they’ll be on our side. If your men need to slip the leash now and then, let them go play in the Westerlands and the Reach. They’ve got more money, anyway,” he added, dry.

“Yeah, all right,” she said. “Speaking of raids—can I have those longships back? You’re not going to have any use for them, and if I put crews of my own men on them, every captain will get a vote when it comes time for the coronation.”

He snorted. “You can buy them from me, if you like. I need the money to repair the damage you’ve done.”

“Fine,” she said. “A hundred dragons a ship.”

He burst out in a laugh. “After I had to take them on my own shores? A thousand a ship, and count yourself lucky that I let you have them at the price.”

She scowled. Then abruptly she sat up and grinned at him slyly, and swung her leg over his hips, and settled down with her wet cunt sliding over his cock. “Are you sure you can’t do better?” she said, a purr, rocking against him.

He gasped, his hips thrusting up towards her involuntarily, and then he glared at her narrow-eyed and caught her legs around him and stood up with a concerted effort, the muscles of his belly and his thighs straining with the work as she gasped herself. He carried her against the wall of the room and pinned her there and leaned in growling and said, “Oh, I think I’m doing just fine. You’ll have to do some of that southern raiding, if you can’t afford them all,” and she laughed, breathless, and wrapped her legs tight around his waist.

#

Catelyn had protested the alliance Robb had made with Balon Greyjoy’s daughter as strongly as she could when anyone else might hear, and more strongly still when she’d been with Robb in private. She couldn’t understand how Robb could be willing once again to trust them. But he’d held firm despite all her entreaties, and the months since hadn’t reconciled her to it, even after Lady Yara had sent them the head and hands of three different captains she’d caught raiding in the North, and had punished for it.

It was only one of Catelyn’s cares, however, and not the greatest. Robb had dealt the ironborn a severe blow, before he’d accepted their fealty, and the victory had put heart and spirit back into his men. Catelyn was sure that another betrayal would come from that quarter, but it could be a while in coming, and Robb might not have been wrong to take the alliance in order to husband his soldiers for a time, if only he’d done it with his eyes open. So she’d put it aside, to be thought of again later.

For the Karstarks had refused even to hear any of her overtures, and even before Robb had returned from dealing with the ironborn, Alys Karstark had been married to Lord Cerwyn’s eldest son Cley, instead of to Umber’s second son. That was an alliance that would give Robb trouble, she was sure; Lord Cerwyn had already made plain that he now wanted to be held one of the great lords of the North. He had been spending money freely, expanding his keep and putting in large glassgardens of his own, and hiring more men: Catelyn suspected that he’d quietly put aside a fortune in Lannister gold during the war, instead of passing his takings to Robb.

“I’m certain you’re right,” Robb had said wearily. “But I don’t see what I can do about it now. If I challenge him, he’ll only lie to my face. Should I march on his keep and crush him? For what cause? He’s offered me no open threat.”

Roose Bolton worried him far more, she knew; he’d told her, in confidence, about his certainty that Lord Bolton’s bastard had sacked Winterfell himself on his father’s orders—that he might even have been responsible for Bran and Rickon’s deaths. He had no proof, only suspicions, but Catelyn felt the treacheries mounting up like walls, all around them.

And by far the worst of all…Talisa had borne Robb a girl, who had not lived for three weeks, with all her mother could do. Bad enough, but Talisa had strained her own health, not fully recovered from a difficult birth, trying to tend the baby, and had fallen ill herself afterwards in exhaustion and grief. Old Nan, who had managed to escape all the keep’s sorrows—”Too gristly for the gods to want me yet, m’lady,” she’d said; when they’d returned, she’d crept out of her great-nephew’s home in the winter town where she’d been living and come back up to Winterfell, determined to renew her service—had brought her through it with careful nursing, but Talisa was still not wholly well.

So when the messenger from Pyke came in person, not a year after the accord, to announce to Robb in the court that Lady Yara had been delivered of a healthy son, Catelyn received the news with pressed lips: it seemed like a taunting gesture, deliberate. She looked over at the throne with frowning surprise when Robb told the messenger, “Tell Lady Yara she has our congratulations, and I’ll send her five of the longships I hold as a gift for the boy,” a too-rich gift that put dangerous power back into ironborn hands.

She would have tried to speak with Robb at once, but she couldn’t get him aside right away; his household bannermen wanted to drink with him and the messenger afterwards, as if they thought it a worthy excuse. She left them to it for an hour, and then came back to find the hall raucous, in midday, with Robb himself grinning and already half-drunk and being plied with more strong wine as the men around him cheered, and she stared at the room full of rejoicing with the uneasy sense of something she didn’t understand.

She waited to one side of the room for a little while until Boric Glover went to the privies; she’d known him since he was a squalling child of three, so she caught him in the corridor as he returned and drew him aside into an empty chamber before he could mix back into the crowd. “What on earth is going on?” she demanded. “Why are you all celebrating the birth of an heir for Pyke? Did Robb make some agreement with Lady Yara, if she should have a son?”

Boric stared at her blankly and said, “It’s—it’s his, m’lady. The king’s,” he added, bewildered at her even having to ask, as well he might be: of course it was the answer. Only Catelyn hadn’t wanted to believe it, and so she had managed not to think of the possibility until he’d said it aloud. She sat down heavily on a chair and let him go back to the celebration.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” she demanded of Robb, the next morning—she’d given over any hope of speaking to him the same day—when she’d finally managed to take him aside into his study. “Yara Greyjoy has borne you a son. What do you think that means?”

“It means I have a son,” Robb said, sharply. “And he’s safe on Pyke, behind an army of reavers, where Bolton and Cerwyn don’t have enough of a fleet to get at him, no matter what else they might try.” Catelyn stiffened and stared at him. “This wasn’t a matter of lust. It took us three weeks before we were sure she was with child.”

Catelyn threw up her arms. “And did you think nothing of what this will do to your wife in the eyes of the North, the eyes of your bannermen?” she said tightly. “They already look at her with dislike! Now you’ve made her look a failure. She’ll learn about it before the day is out, if someone hasn’t already rubbed her face in it!”

“Talisa already knew,” Robb said, and Catelyn stopped, taken aback. “I told her when I came back from the campaign. I’m not going to be a liar. She knows it doesn’t change my feelings for her, and she’s not a failure to me because we lost our daughter.” 

Catelyn pressed her lips hard in impatience and glared at him: only a man could pretend such a thing was true long enough to say it out loud. Robb had the honesty to grimace and then he added, “To me. I know it matters. I do. But Talisa and I can’t try again for months yet, and I might not have months. You know that Yunkai fell six weeks ago! Any day now, we might get the word that the dragon queen has launched her invasion fleet to come at us. If I do have to leave, to go to war in the south, I’ll leave secret papers with you, legitimizing Yara’s son in case I’m killed, with you as regent. And then you’ll have him, with Yara and the ironborn at his back, and you can marry Sansa to Umber’s son, or Glover’s, to be his Protector of the Realm until he’s grown. Otherwise, there’ll be a civil war over Sansa before my bones go in the crypt.”

He spoke of his own death as harshly and matter-of-fact as if he saw it before him, and Catelyn reached out to him instinctively, her anger fading. But Robb turned away from her, and added, in flat tones, “I’ll be grateful for you to support Talisa however you can. I won’t have her treated with disrespect even if she never bears me a child at all. But I also won’t have any child of mine treated the way Father let you treat Jon,” and she flinched back from him. “Yara and her son will be welcome in Winterfell, any time they choose to visit, and the boy will know I’m glad to be his father, even if I can’t be there to raise him.”

Catelyn left him and stood a moment in the corridor, her hands clenched on one another. She hadn’t wanted Robb to marry Talisa; she still regretted it, and worried what the match would cost their house that they could not afford. And yet—she turned and went through the keep up to the solar: Talisa and Sansa often liked to sit there in the mornings, when the sun came full into the cozy room, with hand work. She stopped on the threshold; Talisa was alone, sitting by the window with her work neglected in her lap, her cheek wan, looking out at the trees heavy with snow.

She looked around, and Catelyn crossed the room and sat down in the window seat beside her. Talisa smiled at her a little, a wavering smile that meant to be brave, and Catelyn said, “It is hard to forgive a husband sometimes. I am truly sorry that Robb should have given you such sorrow.”

But Talisa shook her head a little, and bent her head. “I know what everyone says about me,” she said after a moment, softly. “I’m a foreign whore who managed to seduce a boy king who was young and stupid enough to marry me. And…” She swallowed. “I did like it,” she whispered, almost ashamedly. “Marrying a king. When I left home to become a healer, my father told me he’d disown me, because I was shaming my family. And he did it. He cast me out in front of the family shrine. He wept, and my mother did too, but he did it. When Robb asked me to marry him…it felt like proving them wrong. That I wasn’t…” She trailed off and gestured a little, full of all the words that the world used for women who didn’t have the protection of their family and their house. “But Robb is the one who was wrong. He nearly lost the war because of me, and everyone who loves Robb knows it. So—of course they all think I’m a greedy schemer. How could I do that to him, if I really loved him?”

Her voice trembled, thick with tears, and Catelyn sighed out her own last resentment and took Talisa’s hand in hers. “You were a young girl yourself,” she said. “When you left home, and even when you married Robb.”

Talisa nodded a little. “But I still haven’t brought Robb anything but trouble. Not even a child,” and she looked down at the work in her hands: a little gown for a child of six months, not quite finished.

“You will,” Catelyn said, as firmly as if she could make the gods hand one over. “You were scarcely married for three months before you were with child. She was born living. You will have more.”

Talisa was silent, and then she said softly, “Even if I do…it won’t be enough. Robb doesn’t love Yara Greyjoy, he doesn’t wish she was his. He told me so, and I believe him. But he went to bed with her and gave her a child anyway, because he got peace with the Iron Islands in exchange. And I can’t even be sorry. How could I be sorry that Robb found a way not to invade them? How could I want him to spend the lives of six thousand of his own men instead, and kill who knows how many of theirs? Maybe I am selfish, but I’m not that selfish, or at least not that stupid. But—that’s what I’ll have to bear, as long as I’m his queen. All the times he’ll have to put me last, over and over, to make up for marrying me in the first place. Because I don’t have anything else to give him.”

Catelyn felt the words trembling on her lips: We could annul the match, she wanted to say. You could marry another, or take vows as you meant to do. For the sake of their house, she knew she should have let them out. But she felt them as a dreadful cruelty in her mouth, to this girl who loved her son, and to whom he’d already been so cruel. “You said that your father disowned you,” she said after a moment, instead. “Is that a thing that can be undone?”

Talisa lifted her head in surprise. “I…yes,” she said, after a moment. “He only needs to give my name back to the shrine. But…”

“A king cannot afford to marry a woman of no family and no standing,” Catelyn said. “but he can marry a foreign princess. So we must try and make you into one, if we can, even by some stretch. Tell me more of your family, and their place in Volantis. Do they have any standing there? Are any of your relations men of power?”

Talisa said slowly, “I’m…related to the triarch Malaquo Maegyr. He’s my father’s second cousin. He’s been elected twelve times.”

Catelyn nodded. “I’ve heard of the triarchs,” she said. “That is something, at least. Would your father be able to hire some men who could seem to be men at arms of your house? If Robb sent him money for them?”

Talisa stiffened a little. “We have men, but…the guards of noble households in Volantis are slaves.”

“They will be free men in Westeros,” Catelyn said. “Would there be some of them who would be glad to come, if Robb bought their freedom? Or some other servants of your household?”

“I—” Talisa said, and then bowed her head and put her face in her hands, dragging in a short gasping breath of tears and relief, and Catelyn reached out and put her arms around the girl’s shoulders, and drew her into her arms.

Chapter Text

Robb waited for another month, and then two, to hear more news about the dragon queen from King’s Landing, but no more messages came. It seemed as though he might have time after all: one night as he and Talisa lay together in their bed, their breath coming quick in kisses, her hands mapping out his shoulders and his back, stroking, eager, just when he would have gone down her body with hands and mouth, Talisa stopped him and said, softly, “We could…start trying again.”

“Are you certain you feel well enough?” he asked, softly himself, and then she smiled back at him, and her eyes were brilliant again, lit with hunger. He was panting with his own as he prowled up to meet her mouth, a surge of ferocious lust pounding through him that he hadn’t been able to feel, all these months of worry and sorrow, and she was pulling him down upon her, her legs winding around his hips, kissing him fervently.

When at last they did get any news about Daenerys Targaryen, it came from an unexpected direction: Talisa’s father had sent a long letter, giving them his blessing, and in it he wrote that the dragon queen had marched on from Yunkai towards Meereen, and in Volantis they now said that she meant instead to raise a new Valyrian empire in Essos, and never come back to Westeros at all.

Robb hadn’t thought of trying to reach out to Talisa’s family in Volantis at all before Mother had suggested it. He knew they’d disowned her for leaving home, but it wasn’t only that. He had only the most vague notion of where the city even was, and his only idea of what it was like came from a single picture he remembered in a storybook, elephants and tigers marching through sun-washed golden streets, as magical as the story itself, of a demon that lived inside a teapot and granted wishes. It hadn’t quite been a real place in the world to him.

But he’d written to them at Mother’s behest, to formally ask her family’s blessing on their marriage, and when the answer came, bringing that news along, it felt like a sunrise. Talisa’s father also wrote that he was sending a company of ten men to be her honor guard, and her mother a great chest of bridal clothes, but far more valuable than that, the triarch Malaquo himself had enclosed a note formally greeting him as King in the North, and as a token of friendship between their nations, had decreed that tradesmen of the North should pay no duties in Volantis for the length of his reign, and be welcome to dock in the upper harbor of the city, like native vessels.

Robb at once wrote to Lord Manderly in White Harbor, and to Yara as well, to encourage them to send ships, and sent an answer back to promise an equal welcome for Volantene traders in all his own harbors. It would enrich houses he could rely upon, and help the North prosper even if the Lannisters did put duties on their trade with the south. And when he’d sent the letters, he carried Talisa off to bed laughing to celebrate, feeling as if the gods had just handed him a reprieve on a sentence of death.

Four days later, in the early hours of the morning, Maester Wornos knocked on his door, anxiously, and gave him a raven message from Seagard by way of Riverrun: through the gossip of the smallfolk who lived between their neighboring keeps, Lord Mallister had learned that one of Walder Frey’s granddaughters had just secretly gone North to marry Lord Bolton, with an enormous dowry of ten times her weight in silver—and Bolton had sent that dowry straight over the Narrow Sea to Essos, to hire sellswords to come over to the North and fight for him.

“The Lannisters are behind this,” Sansa said to him fiercely, when she’d heard the news. “They’re not afraid of Daenerys anymore, so now they’ve set Bolton on you.”

Robb didn’t know if that were true or not, but it didn’t matter. He smiled at her as best he could, because there was nothing for it but to have courage, and said, “Well, I suppose now we’ll find out if it is enough to outnumber me seven to one.” 

He’d thought he was ready for anything Bolton would do. Over the last year, he’d personally scouted all the approaches to Winterfell from the Dreadfort, taking one hunting trip after another until he knew every step Bolton would be taking along the way. He’d also been quietly training more men-at-arms out of Bolton’s sight; he’d scattered small companies of men here and there at every holdfast that answered directly to Winterfell, and he’d asked Lord Hornwood to raise another thousand for him at his own keep, a week’s march away.

He’d also asked Lord Umber to stay with him at Winterfell with his men. It was a heavy price to ask a man who hadn’t seen his own distant home in even longer than Robb had, and with his wife sending increasingly urgent letters once a month demanding his return. But Umber had nodded from under his frowning brows, when Robb had told him in confidence about his suspicions of Bolton. “And he’d make us Lannister lackeys all over again to get the men to do it, no doubt,” the old man had said. “Well, Stark, if I do go home, I know I’ll not leave it again. So I’ll make my wife wait a little longer, and give you one more chance to save me from dying in my bed.”

Those were all the men he’d be able to muster in time. He’d thought that would be enough to defend Winterfell against a surprise attack, and if Bolton started raising more men, his own spies near the Dreadfort would send word, and there would be time to call up his own banners openly. But by now he’d got word from traders in White Harbor, who’d seen the ships: five sellsword companies, sixteen thousand men in all, had sailed from Braavos and Pentos armed and ready to march, paid for with the dowry of a daughter of House Frey. Bolton had another four thousand men of his own. Twenty thousand men in all, and Robb would be riding out with three thousand, and two hundred boys he’d recruited in a hurry out of the streets of the winter town, not old enough to even know the sword yet.

And then worse news came, from the eyes he had in the town of Castle Cerwyn: Lord Cerwyn was calling up his own bannermen. Robb had meant to send Mother and Talisa and Sansa south to White Harbor, where they could always get a ship to the Riverlands if need be—but if he did that now, they’d surely be captured on the kingsroad or in the woods by Cerwyn’s men.

Mother took him by the shoulders, when the word came, and he was standing stricken over the small hastily scribbled message. “You mustn’t think about us,” she said, her face set, allowing no touch of fear. “More of your men are coming in each day. We will mount a defense of Winterfell with the ones who arrive after you’ve gone. Trust me and the girls to look after the keep, and go hunt down that traitorous dog and bring us back his head.”

Robb nodded; there wasn’t anything else to do. He went and kissed Talisa and Sansa, and then he went to the godswood and knelt before the heart tree, and begged the gods for the lives of his family, all the family he had left, trying not to remember how he’d made them the same pleas, the last time he’d marched away, and how they’d answered him then.

At least he moved fast. He reached the crossing of the White Knife three days before Bolton’s army did, and that was enough time for him to send out men up and down the river to burn all four of the footbridges in a day’s ride. “But they’ll just use the fords, your Grace,” Micah Hornwood said, tentatively. The river wasn’t high at this time of year; too many of the tributaries were frozen already, up in the mountains, and a man could wade across the whole span without the water coming above his thighs.

“Aye,” Robb said. “That they will.”

Once the footbridges had been taken down, he sent the bulk of his force with Lord Umber back west towards the narrow course of the Sheepwater River, with orders that puzzled them: to dam it up, in a valley two miles north in the hills. Robb kept only two hundred of his youngest and strongest men with him, the ones who could best afford to lose some sleep, and his little company of pages.

The next day, he watched from cover as the Bolton forces spent the day wading through the fords. They made camp not long afterwards; they didn’t want to keep walking with wet feet. The sellsword ranks were sharp and regimented, with their campfires spaced from one another as evenly as if they’d surveyed the ground for a keep and measured out the divisions of the walls. And when they’d finished laying out their camp, by every one of those firesides, boots were lined up drying.

It wasn’t yet dark when Robb started leading his own pages down in small groups to the edge of the camp, Grey Wind’s ears pricked up for the patrols. Whenever there was an opening, Robb sent the boys darting into the camp to begin going up and down those neatly ordered aisles, hidden in plain sight amidst the crowd of other pages and errand-runners. They gathered up the wet boots at each campfire, making a show of taking them to pick them clean of mud, with the small, sharp knives he’d given them.

Two hours before the dawn, the boys had all come back out again, and every boot in the camp had been slit open along all its seams, and the soles thrown into the river. When they’d finished, Robb took fifty of the men and made a quick sortie against the supply train in the rear. There was some little confusion in the camp as the men woke and discovered their boots had been ruined. But the sellswords were good, disciplined men: they quickly formed up into ranks and began to advance on them anyway. But by then, Robb had set fire to the two carts carrying spare boots, and he sounded the retreat and took his men back away into the hills before the counterattack could take on any momentum.

He didn’t expect Bolton to stop and wait for replacement supplies, which would have taken him weeks to get. Most of the men had socks, and they wrapped their feet in cloth and marched onward into the hills towards Winterfell. Robb spent the next five days harrying the force with more night attacks. Nothing of great significance: he took fifty men with him on each raid, and they barely picked off a dozen men or took a couple of supply wagons each time. But he was hitting the force on all sides, two or three times in a night, making sure the men had to stay alert in every part of the camp. Bolton had already tripled his patrols as well, and his bastard’s vicious dogs had been set loose to prowl the perimeter. But Robb’s raids were too small for that to stop him: Grey Wind’s nose found him openings to get through, and the dogs went barking wildly in false alarms a dozen times a night, every time they found one of the places where Grey Wind had marked the border of the camp, even if he was well away by the time they found it.

Robb had always felt an inner sense of how he wanted a battle to go. He remembered planning sessions with his bannermen, all of them nodding as he followed the instinct that told him one choice was better than another, one move closer to victory than another. But with the numbers so badly skewed, with so little chance, he’d had to make a tighter plan of campaign, and he’d finally put that instinct into words: he was trying to get control of the fight, of its tempo. He had to put himself into sympathy with the enemy and feel their movements, their choices, in his own mind—and then he had to take the lead, and show the enemy where to go.

And that was what he was doing, with the quick stinging attacks, with the theft of their boots: the enemy had to go slower all day, they were all on alert every night, footsore and tired; Robb felt their irritation, and Bolton’s own rising wariness, just as if he was in among them. For Bolton was a cautious man, and he knew that he was facing a man who could beat him at any better odds. He hadn’t gone to war hoping to win a real battle at all. He meant to get to Winterfell with his enormous advantage in men and simply overwhelm them, either on the road or at the keep, before Robb could call enough of his banners to make it a real fight.

And Bolton surely couldn’t make any sense of the fighting so far, what Robb was doing, because he couldn’t see how it would stop him from achieving his goal. He knew he could take Winterfell without a single boot in his camp, and that none of the little attacks would cost him anything he couldn’t afford to lose. But he wouldn’t be ready to assume that Robb was doing something useless. Robb had beaten the Lannisters, at first, because they hadn’t feared him enough; but it was just as good to be feared too much. Bolton would worry that there was a trap in the attacks, something he didn’t understand. So he’d try and find a way to make them stop.

That night, Robb and his small pack rejoined the rest of his force in the valley up in the hills where he’d ordered them to dam the Sheepwater. It wasn’t running very fast at this time of year, but five days had seen it turning the valley into a small but respectable lake. Robb nodded in satisfaction and went up to the thick stand of trees atop the southern ridge, where he watched with Lord Umber and Lord Hornwood at his side as Bolton’s entire infantry turned off the trade road and marched straight into the now-dry gully where the Sheepwater had been running, with his cavalry divided into two groups being sent to ride along the top of either wall of the long ravine.

“By all the blessed gods’ teeth, Stark,” Lord Umber muttered at his side, incredulous, and Robb grinned a little, savage and satisfied, as he looked around at his men, who were all staring at him as if he were a magician.

He’d only made it a smart move for Bolton: his scouts would have brought the dry riverbed to him as the quickest and most level route through the rough hilly ground, easier for his footsore men to march through. And Bolton would think that the raised walls on either side of the gully would make it near impossible for Robb to launch any more little nighttime sorties for the two days of the march. Which wouldn’t make a whit of difference. But Bolton taking the gully would.

“Beric,” Robb said, to Umber’s younger son, “you’ll wait until tomorrow morning. I want them well on their way, too far to turn back. Send some of your men back to their last camp with those two wagons we took. Open up their latrine pits and bring back as much filth as you can to put in the water before you break open the dam. After you’ve done that, take your men and circle around south, and take up positions inside the ashwood grove that I showed you as we came east. On the third day from today, picket your horses well out of the way, lay out the shields and spears in a line at the southern edge of the grove, covered by brush, and put all your archers in the trees on the northern edge of it, facing the clearing.”

“Aye, your Grace,” Beric said, staring and obedient.

Robb marched the rest of his men westward, keeping north of the gully: two days through rough terrain, but they still reached the other end of it before Bolton’s army began to trickle out, late that day, alongside the renewed gurgling stream. The sellswords didn’t look quite so tidy anymore. Most of the men came out of the gully limping, their foot wrappings stained to the knees with mud and filth, and bloodied with slivers of glass and broken knives and sharp stones: all the wreckage that the smallfolk had been digging out of the ruins of Winterfell, which Robb had told them to bring out and scatter through the second half of the gully before he’d started marching east.

Robb waited for twilight, and then he took his entire mounted force of a thousand lancers against the horsemen who were patrolling on the northern side of the ravine: two thousand men in good order, steel and lance. It was dark enough by then that they didn’t see the full size of his force, and they thought he was only making another little stinging attack. Their captain—one of Bolton’s own bannermen—was eager for blood. As soon as Robb sounded the horn call he’d been using for retreat, in all those night attacks, the man blew a charge to pursue—and then stormed with his men right into the gap that Robb’s signal had opened for him, while instead Robb’s men charged forward in two wings against his flanks, and smashed his rear between them.

Robb regrouped his men back into a single mass, wheeling about, and they struck into the rear of the force a second time, Bolton’s men falling into disorder, some trying to hold them off, others just trying to flee, and all beginning to panic in the growing dark. Grey Wind tore out the captain’s throat as behind Robb his men roared, “Stark!” They slaughtered and scattered the remainder of the cavalry force and kept going straight out through them and back into the hills: a hundred men lost, in exchange for two thousand overthrown, and the infantry below hadn’t been able to marshal themselves in time to take part in the fight at all, not even to cut off their line of retreat.

Robb rode away while Bolton’s men were still trying to form up, hearing their furious shouts fading into the dark behind them. His heart was pounding and his eyes wide, the ferocious heat of battle still alive in his chest; it was a thin moon, but he could see in the dark almost as clear as daylight, the glistening black of the blood spattering their armor and skin, the grinning bared teeth all around him, his own men full of life as if they’d sucked it out of their enemies.

The rest of it almost seemed easy, after that. The next day he waited until Bolton’s army had halted for their midday meal, and then he took his entire force of men and hit them hard in a narrow band straight into their very center, killing all the men he could. He let them cut off what they thought was his line of retreat behind them, and then he fought his way through and broke out the other side and kept going south instead: another thousand of Bolton’s men killed, and the entire camp flung into disorder at his heels.

There were four hours of daylight left, and only a broad stretch of open meadowlands ahead of them: his force of two thousand men, half of them on foot, was exposed and plainly visible, with nowhere to hide nearby. Robb knew without the slightest doubt what Bolton was going to do, and he did it: he gathered all the rest of his cavalry, another five thousand men, and sent them in pursuit under one of his best men: his huntsman Locke.

“Slow down a bit,” Robb said to his men, as he judged the distance between them and the pursuit: it had taken Locke half an hour to get his men going. “We don’t want to get too far ahead. They might get discouraged,” and their grins up at him were full of delight.

They marched in good order for an hour, with the pursuers gaining all the way. As they sighted the first of the ash trees, Locke had almost got into range for a cavalry charge. Robb gave the signal to pick up their own pace. He grinned as he heard the order to charge shouted behind him, too late: their quick trotting jog was already taking them too far out of range, so Locke had to give the order to pull up before the horses lost their wind, and resume the pursuit, with all that momentum and energy wasted.

Robb caught sight of Beric Umber’s men in the trees only because he was looking for them. The pursuit was all but right on their heels by then—Locke was waiting a bit too long now, surely determined to wait until he got so close that his quarry couldn’t hope to escape another charge. Robb gave the order to go flat out. His men broke into a run towards what looked like a stand of brambles up ahead, as if they hoped to escape. Locke at once shouted his own men forward into another charge, bringing his whole force quickly inside the clearing. And as soon as they were all the way in, Beric’s archers fired a full volley right into their backs, every one a clear shot. Three hundred men and horses went down dead and screaming at once.

The bramble was only a thin mess of branches and vines concealing the line of shields and spears, laid out waiting just beneath. Robb’s infantry seized them and formed into a line of battle even as Locke’s cavalry came crashing down into them, driving themselves onto the spears. Robb wheeled away to one side with half his cavalry while Hornwood took the other, circling around, and they hit the flanks of the cavalry force even as the archers sent another volley into the rear, piling up a heap of thrashing and dead horses that blocked Locke’s retreat, and Robb began carving his way into the encircled force, pounding them relentlessly against the shield wall.

It was bloody work: by the time night fell, the grove was full of corpses and the dying. Only a few hundred of Bolton’s men had escaped, breaking out of their ring and fleeing back north towards the main force. Robb had sent some scouts after them; they came back soon to report that there wasn’t any sign that Bolton was sending any of his infantry after them.

Robb walked among the dead as his men looted their good steel and took their purses, leaving more than they took; he’d already sent word by a couple of lightly injured men to the nearest villages for the smallfolk to come and pillage whatever they left. “Cut off their heads,” he told his men, when they’d finished, and they chopped off the men’s heads with their own blades and piled them as a grisly cairn into the wagons that Beric had driven to the clearing, with Locke’s head on top of the heap.

The smallfolk were arriving by then, with sacks and wheelbarrows and carts; Robb took a few of the drovers and put them on his own wagons instead, with his young pages clinging on the sides, and sent them through the night to go and scatter the heads along the trade road to Winterfell. When he’d seen them off, he threw himself down beside Grey Wind under a tree and slept until mid-morning of the next day.

There wasn’t any rush. Bolton had tried to hurry, and he’d been punished for it brutally. He still had the odds: it was now thirteen thousand men against two. But he’d lost all of his cavalry, and many of his infantry were lamed and likely starting to get fevered and frostbitten. He wouldn’t be going quick anymore.

When Robb woke up the next morning, his own scouts were back to tell him that he had been right not to worry: Bolton had moved his forces back onto the trade road, a known quantity, and he’d dropped his pace to a wary and cautious march, less than twenty miles a day, with his scouts being sent well ahead to check the ground carefully in every direction. And by the afternoon, his army would begin to march slowly past the heads of their fellows, tumbled out of the wagons to line the road: a grisly message that would tell them that Robb knew where they were and how they were going, with Locke’s head at the very end to put dismay into Bolton’s officers. There would also be more patches of broken glass seeded on the road as well, anywhere that there were brambles or hard rocky ground on the sides of the road.

Robb left Bolton to the pleasures of his journey, and led his own rested men on an easy day’s march of fifteen miles themselves, now coming into countryside he knew as well as the corridors of Winterfell. They camped outside the holdfast of his father’s old master of hounds, Algon, who’d had his boys hunting day and night since Robb had left Winterfell, and had put up dozens of good snug tents against the cold. There were twenty deer already roasting by the time Robb rode into the waiting camp, and he and his men devoured them down to the bones before another good night’s sleep, with a thick porridge of oats cooked with the bones and scraps to make a hearty breakfast in the morning, and a hot mash for his horses.

He marched them northwest all the next day, and came out onto a high ridge overlooking the trade road with the dust of Bolton’s army still an hour away. It was a good vantage point on the countryside below: the road curved away from the tall ridge of hard stone and a grove of pines stood across from it. In warm weather, a little nameless stream went down over the ridge as a waterfall, running across the trade road and meandering away through the trees to go meet the White Knife; it had frozen clear and brilliant.

Bolton’s scouts sighted them only a little while later, and went galloping back along the road; Bolton rode forward warily with a flag of parley and called up to ask if Robb wished to discuss terms.

“Terms?” Robb said. “No, Lord Bolton. I don’t offer terms to traitors. I only wanted you to know that you’ve two days left to live. And here is the place where you’ll die. When you see it next, know that your hour has come.” Bolton and his men all darted looks around themselves, involuntarily, and Robb gave a jerk of his head to his men and sent them back away out of sight.

Umber eyed him sidelong as they rode onwards. “Stark, I’m going to start thinking that you need to be burned as a witch.”

Robb grinned at the old man, savagely. “Why, it’s only a matter of telling him where he needs to go. How would he know if I didn’t?” He laughed at Umber’s bewildered snort, and rode onward into the trees.

He hit Bolton’s army in the rear early that night with another small party of volunteers, men who’d taken no injury in the fighting so far and had slept well. They made three quick stinging attacks just to keep Bolton on the jump for the rest of the night, and then Robb rode forward to rejoin the rest of his force at the crossroads where the eastern trade road met the kingsroad. And there he laid out his forces in eight separate small companies, arrayed on either side of the road, and waited.

Bolton’s scouts sighted them in the morning and rode back to tell him that Robb was offering battle. Bolton’s army slowed to a crawl at once, and halted just out of the distance of a charge, putting up a pavilion in the back for Bolton to gather with his officers. Robb used a stick to trace the shadow of a spear on the ground, to mark the time, and then gave it half an hour in his head. He thought it was even odds which way Bolton would go, whether he’d try to advance straight ahead to meet them, or whether he’d try to maneuver to occupy the higher ground Robb had deliberately left open by putting one of his infantry formations too far back.

It didn’t matter what he chose, though. What mattered was that Bolton would make a decision, after half an hour, and he wouldn’t like whichever one he made. Robb could see through the walls of his command tent as clear as if he was inside it: Bolton was in there surrounded by half-panicked men who’d spent the last two weeks losing and losing and losing, despite every possible advantage. He’d done the smart thing every time, and every time it had been a mistake or a trap. He didn’t want to give Robb a battle that Robb was asking for, even if it still looked like a more than decent chance for him to win.

But Bolton couldn’t refuse to give battle on such good terms. So he would take half an hour’s time, to let himself try and work out any sign of a trap, but he wouldn’t allow himself any more, because he wouldn’t want to show indecision before his uneasy officers; he’d feel the need to keep a rigid control over them far more than anything else.

So Robb waited for half an hour and a little more, and then, when he was sure Bolton would have given his orders, he gave his own first signal, and his men changed their positions: almost the entire force began to advance slowly towards Bolton’s right flank. And then Robb waited for the shadow of the spear to move another inch, and signaled the last two companies of his infantry, who suddenly moved forward as if to take that open higher ground on Bolton’s left.

He’d timed it just right. Almost at once, Bolton’s army was moving in three separate directions, as he jumped in reaction to both of the maneuvers and sent two new sets of orders, messengers going on top of one another. As soon as the mess in their ranks was underway, Robb sounded the charge, and his entire force pivoted to come together into a single mass. They drove directly into the center, where Bolton had men bleeding off in every other direction. When they hit, they broke the force apart into two halves, and each one in disarray, most of them now cut off from Bolton entirely and unable to get fresh orders at all.

In advance, Robb had told his men to avoid giving the sellswords battle, and to target Bolton’s bannermen and their companies instead, and he’d also ordered the loudest man in each of his companies to shout that command over and over, everywhere they went on the fields. It wasn’t any surprise to see the sellswords lagging back and avoiding them in return; in places, groups of them even began to sit down upon the ground and nurse their feet.

And Robb himself took a hundred of his best fighters and started hunting through the field for men he knew, Grey Wind’s nose leading the way to them wherever the fighting made an opening. They killed three Bolton bannermen and two more of his huntsmen, putting their heads on spears to carry along with them as grisly banners, until the officers all began to break and try to get away when they saw him coming for them. The Bolton companies began to come apart as their officers fled, and that was the end of any sellsword company nearby as well: they all began throwing down their swords all over the field.

Within two hours, Robb managed to force the opening he’d been looking for: a clear run at Bolton himself. Robb rallied three hundred of his men and made straight for him. Bolton had a guard company of five hundred men around him, but his nerve was broken, or he feared theirs was; their ranks wavered, and he ordered a retreat and fell back into the woods.

Robb chased them only far enough to see that they were going properly, Bolton’s bastard with his pack of dogs leading them away, and then he turned back, only to find that the battle was over. Even the rest of Bolton’s own men were yielding: they’d seen their lord abandon the field, and the heart had gone out of them.

Robb turned his attention to the captains of the sellsword companies; Umber had been gathering them out of the field, and he herded them over in a pack. Robb told them, “You’ve come into my country to help a traitor trying to overthrow his sworn king. By our laws, every last one of you is condemned to die. Talk me out of it.”

The senior captain rubbed sweat and blood from his face and looked out over the field: the sellswords had been put on their knees with their arms folded behind their heads, and Hornwood’s men were putting ropes around their wrists and necks. The man looked up at him. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any use for ten thousand soldiers? We’ve been paid for the whole season.”

Robb snorted. “I’ll give it some thought. March them to Winterfell and camp them outside the winter town,” he told Hornwood. “If any one of them gives you any trouble at all, put him to death at once, along with his next senior officer.”

By then, Bolton had an hour’s head start: Robb thought that would be enough time to give him. He took six hundred of his men on the trail, almost all the men he had left who weren’t wounded or spent. It wasn’t hard work for Grey Wind: Robb knew where they were going. There was a good clearing not far off the road, half a day’s march back, wide open but surrounded by rocks and thick brush, a sharp place for an ambush. And he was certain that Bolton knew of it, because he’d had Algon leave one of the freshly slaughtered deer there, and those hungry hounds had surely hunted it out on the march.

When they drew close, Robb stopped and had all his men put on helms and breastplates that they’d taken from the better-armed sellswords, and then he sent half the force creeping quietly around to the northern side of the clearing. The rest of them he led in good order straight to the clearing, at the steady pace of a determined pursuit, exactly as if they meant to just ride straight through. Robb could all but smell Bolton’s men inside it, the man’s own eagerness: he could still win in the end, with murder instead of war; that would only make him happier, surely.

But when they had come to the edge of the clearing, Robb gave the signal and put spurs to his horse’s side, and his force launched across the clearing in a wild rush. Two of his guard were close at his sides, Hal Mollin and Aron Hornwood, holding shields up over his head and back; the arrows and spears came out of the trees, but a little too slow: only a few of them even clanged against the shields. His own men came pouring into the clearing from the other side with a roaring shout to begin firing their own arrows into the trees, bringing dozens of Bolton’s men down, and Grey Wind tore open the lead hound’s belly as the pack of dogs flung themselves into the fray.

Bolton broke out again to the north with a pack of twenty men, but Robb chased them at once now; the woods were close and thick, so they took the quickest route, following a frozen streambed through the trees, riding as fast as they could, and Robb was grinning viciously on their heels as they broke out through the heavy pines onto the trade road—exactly where the stream came down over the ridge, frozen solid. Bolton and his men checked their horses for a staring moment as they recognized the place, just before Algon and twenty crossbowmen stood up from atop the ridge, and shot them all down where they stood.

Robb rode out of the trees and looked down at the groaning, gasping men. Bolton had taken a crossbow bolt in the shoulder and another in the chest and had been flung from his horse by the impact. He was lying in the dirt, blood trickling from his lips, spreading in a darkening puddle over the ground beneath him. Robb swung down from his horse, and told Umber and Smalljon, “Bring him.”

They picked Bolton up and dragged him to the base of the frozen waterfall, and put him on his knees. Robb told him, “Lord Bolton, I name you oathbreaker and traitor, and before the gods, I sentence you to die. For the sake of the North, will you tell me whether you acted at Tywin Lannister’s behest?”

Bolton looked at him a moment, his mouth stained bright red with blood, and then he shrugged a little. “He didn’t need you anymore. But his help would have come at the price of the crown,” he said. “I didn’t intend to pay it.”

Robb nodded and drew Ice. “Have you any last words?”

Bolton said, “Strike clean,” and bent over for the blow.

Robb had his men take the heads of Bolton’s bastard and the rest of his men, and put them onto spears as well. The hour was growing late, and his men were tired and fading after a long day’s work. He left them to camp and rejoin him in the morning, but he didn’t want to risk the wait. He took twenty volunteers, armed with the heads of the enemy, and Grey Wind led them off the road and southeast through the countryside towards Winterfell. He caught up with Lord Hornwood and the sellswords late that night. They were camped less than half a day’s march from Winterfell, and when the light hit the high watchtower the next morning, and Robb saw the men with bows on the upper level, he knew he’d been right to hurry.

He’d sent a page riding to the keep last night with the news of their victory; by the time the sun was up, Mother had ridden out to meet him in the winter town, in tears of joy, almost of disbelief, cupping his face in her hands when he dismounted to greet her. “Talisa and Sansa send their love, but I didn’t want to risk letting them leave the keep,” she told him. “Lord Cerwyn is on the march, with four thousand men. Some hunters from the winter town saw him on the road this morning and came riding to tell us; we expected him to reach the gates by this night, and I feared he might have scouts riding ahead.”

Robb nodded, his mouth hard with anger. Cerwyn had surely thought that he’d borrow a page from Tywin Lannister’s book, and take Winterfell—and Robb’s family—before Bolton’s army reached it: a fine position to negotiate from, to win more power for himself under a new king. “We should make him welcome,” Robb said. “I’ll go meet him along the way.”

He did re-arm some of his ten thousand sellswords—seeing the head of their former employer on a spike had rather sealed the transfer of loyalties, he thought—and put them in his vanguard as they followed the kingsroad south, while he sent Hornwood with five hundred of his men to flank the road from the west. They met Cerwyn’s force on the road just two miles from the winter town, gay with banners and polished mail. Cerwyn hadn’t been bothering with much scouting after all; the force halted in abrupt confusion when Robb’s men marched into view.

Cerwyn’s face was pale when he rode up under a flag of parley, his eyes darting to the long forest of spears standing upright in the road at Robb’s back: Bolton’s head in the middle, and the heads of his bastard and a dozen of his bannermen to either side. Robb sat his horse in the middle of the road, unsmiling. When Cerwyn said, “Your Grace,” bowing from the waist, Robb only looked straight at him, until Cerwyn swallowed and slid from his mount and bent the knee in the dirt before him, his men following suit. “Your Grace,” he said again, in more of a quaver. “We are glad to find you well.”

“Are you?” Robb said.

Cerwyn didn’t lift his head. “We’d heard that Lord Bolton was marching upon Winterfell,” he said. “We thought…to aid in the defense.”

“That was kind of you,” Robb said. “It’s too bad I’ve already killed him.”

He nudged his horse a few steps closer, with Grey Wind prowling alongside, a low growling in his throat. Cerwyn flinched, his eyes darting towards the sound, like prey, and Robb wanted his blood, in a deep and hungry pit of his belly. He felt he’d had to swell his own skin out two sizes larger, and then grow himself to fit into it. As if he was becoming half a direwolf himself, a hulking beast, savage jaws beneath a crown.

But—in his cooler mind, Robb couldn't forget that he’d earned this treason. Bolton wouldn’t have marched on him without Walder Frey’s fortune in his pockets. Cerwyn wouldn’t have taken such a risk without the Karstarks backing him. This was the payment for the debts he had run up by breaking his own oaths and making those expensive choices: when he’d married Talisa, when he’d killed Rickard Karstark. And he’d be a fool to take on new ones, when he’d just managed to pay the gods back for the mistakes he’d already made, the ones that had devoured half his family, if he wanted the chance to see it grow again.

So instead he leashed his wrath and said, “I wouldn’t want you to feel that you hadn’t done your part, my lord. So when you go back to your keep, you’ll gather up every last coin of the Lannister gold that you took in the war and send it to me at Winterfell. To help restore the defenses you care so much about. And your eldest son Cley will ride back with me now, to be our guest there a while. At least until his father in law comes and bends the knee.”

Chapter Text

 Robb only spent a single night at Winterfell, but he made the most of it: he’d scarcely come through the gates before he caught Talisa up in his arms and carried her straight upstairs and tumbled into bed with her for a wild, fervent rutting, her hands tight in his hair and her cries urging him on. When they finished, she pressed her forehead against his chest and wept a little in sheer relief, and then she pushed him flat and used her mouth on him to bring him up again so she could climb back onto him and fuck him again, even as he groaned, and afterwards he collapsed into sleep and didn’t wake for twelve hours.

When he woke, he kissed her farewell and went to the baths, and an hour later he was back in arms and on the road, going east this time, marching with half of his sellswords straight to the Dreadfort. He didn’t know how much of a garrison Bolton had left at the keep, but he doubted the men there would have the stomach for a long fight when their lord and his only son were both dead. Bolton hadn’t had any other kin that Robb knew of.

He wasn’t wrong, although the castellan didn’t want to believe him at first, and he had to let the man send out the maester and a party of five men to look closely at the half-rotted head on its spike before he finally swallowed it that his lord had been defeated and killed. But afterwards, the castellan hastily surrendered the keep to him at once, and the three hundred men left behind bent the knee when he rode in—as did the young Lady Bolton, trembling and afraid, blinking away tears, when she’d come out into the courtyard.

Robb eyed her in some astonishment. Bolton had been a grey and narrow man, lean and hard and pared thin of flesh; Robb would have bet money on it—had bet his life on it—that all the man’s hungers were cold. But the woman Bolton had chosen from all of Walder Frey’s girls was almost as tall as he’d been and twice as wide, big and fat with curves everywhere, abundant hips and breasts almost overspilling her clothes. Robb was glad he hadn’t met her before the fighting: it would have made him doubt everything he’d thought he knew of the man.

And then he saw some of his men trying not to laugh; Smalljon Umber leaned in and muttered to him, under his breath, “Frey dowered her with ten times her weight in silver.”

Robb stifled a wave of relief, and then sent a quick hard look around to silence the tittering. He dismounted and crossed the courtyard to raise her up. “Don’t be afraid, Lady Bolton. No harm will come to you; you have my word,” he told her, and she swallowed and bobbed him a small anxious courtesy, the kind an unmarried girl would have given, and then another after that when she realized her mistake and made him the deeper one of a lady, and then froze up trying to decide whether to try and make another, after all, in case she wasn’t a lady anymore, until he squeezed her hands and said, “It’s all right,” more gently.

She timidly asked if she could give him and his bannermen dinner, and he didn’t have the heart to explain to her that the keep was his, now, and so it wasn’t her place to host anymore. In any case, it was a good excuse to defer the matter: he knew this victory had the seed of a new problem, and he needed time to think before he named a man to hold the keep.

And when they sat down an hour later after hot baths, he was glad he had left it to her, because she kept the finest table he’d ever eaten at. The dishes weren’t fancy, most of them, but each was done to an exact turn, and so great a variety that there was something for every taste and every whim; she kept the cups brimming with hot spiced wine—he was also glad that he’d taken the time to secure the keep and put his own men at all the guard posts—and at the end she brought out great platters of cheese and honey and seedcake, served with small glasses of spirits of apple.

The larders at Winterfell were all but bare, and Robb had been on campaign for three years before then. Even at Riverrun, at the signing of the treaty, they’d been hard pressed to put more than thin game and bread on the tables. He’d forgotten what it was to eat well at all, much less to feast. The last time had been—the royal visit at Winterfell, he remembered suddenly, with a stinging sensation in the pit of his throat. With the winecup in his hand, he had a sudden vivid memory of the hall full of raucous laughter—Theon and Jory beside him, the two of them joking and teasing one another. Father sitting at the high table at Mother’s side. Rickon already having crept away from the tables to curl up on the hearth with the wolves, and Bran rubbing sleep from his eyes and trying desperately not to yawn. Jon vivid in his absence: Robb remembered frowning up at the high table with a reproach in his heart, when he’d realized that Mother had left Jon out, and Father had let her do it. And the quarrel at the end was bright in his mind, Sansa yelling indignantly and Arya wriggling in protest in his hands as he carried her off to bed. All his family, all together, for almost the last time. He had to blink tears away, and he took more wine to cover it.

“By the gods,” Lord Umber said, groaning drunken and replete, to the point of tactlessness, “Lady Bolton, the worst thing I can say of your husband is that he was a thin man. If my wife kept a table like this, I’d have told his Grace to manage without me and gone back home before now,” and all of them toasted her, full-throated, while she went red and embarrassed with pleasure. At least she didn’t seem to be deeply grieved for her loss.

Robb had to muster an effort of strength and will to get himself up from the table long enough to stagger off to the bedchamber prepared for him: a good fire laid to warm the room, hot bricks in luxuriously soft sheets, heavy bedcurtains to keep out the cold, a clean linen gown warming by the fire. He put it on and crawled into the bed and sprawled out with something between a sigh and a groan, of pure pleasure, and Grey Wind jumped up on the foot of the bed and gave a whuffing of agreement as he settled down: there had even been an enormous beef bone with good chunks of meat on it for him, as well.

He was nearly asleep when his squire rapped gently and put his head in and asked if he’d receive Lady Bolton; Robb mastered the urge to whine in protest and got back out of the bed—there was even a dressing gown provided as well—and let her come in, still anxious and twisting her hands around each other.

“Has someone treated you badly, my lady?” he prompted her, when she didn’t at once tell him what the matter was, and she shook her head urgently.

“No, no, everyone’s been…so nice, even after…” She trailed off, red again, and then she drew a deep breath, visibly gathering courage, and blurted, “Does this mean…do I have to go home?”

Robb blinked at her. “Have to?” he said, a little taken aback; he’d been trying to decide how soon he could let her; he didn’t think she’d be much of a hostage against Walder Frey, and he didn’t mean to be cruel to her the way the Lannisters had been cruel to Sansa.

“I’m just Fat Walda there,” she said. “No one cares about me. Can’t…can’t I just stay? I could keep the house…”

She trailed off, as if she understood even as she spoke that it wouldn’t work. Robb said slowly, “My lady—I’d meant to ask you tomorrow, after you’d had a chance to grieve, but…is there any chance of a child coming?”

“Maybe?” she said, with a sudden brightening of hope. “If—if there was, then…?”

Robb hesitated, considering. He’d already known that he would have to keep her until he was sure there wasn’t a child coming, at the very least. If he sent her home with Bolton’s heir in her belly, Walder Frey would surely try and lay claim to the Dreadfort on the child’s behalf. Robb had thought that he would have to keep her and the child hostage for the rest of their days, to keep them from brewing treason at his back.

But now that he’d met her, he found he didn’t truly worry that she’d be filling a child’s head with thoughts of treason, either on behalf of her husband or her father. So—if there were a child, a Bolton heir, he could leave her as Lady of the Dreadfort instead, with a loyal man of his own as castellan and a hand-picked garrison, and then have the child fostered at Winterfell when they were old enough, to make House Bolton truly loyal at last.

And if he didn’t do that—he’d have to take the keep away from its ancient house, and give it directly to one of his own loyal men. And Robb already knew that he’d at once have a dozen of the young men of his honor guard, most of them the second sons of lords, all of them hoping and clamoring to be the man. He’d long meant to reward all of those young men with the right to establish their own holdfasts, and he’d finally be able to do that now that the North was truly secure beneath his hand. But there was a large distance between founding a new holdfast and becoming at a stroke the lord of one of the greatest fortresses of the North, a castle that had served the Red Kings. Whoever he chose, the rest would grow envious and angry, instead of grateful for the lesser reward that he could give them all.

“If there’s a child,” he said finally, “then they’re heir to the Dreadfort, and as their mother, you would stay and be lady of the keep, and look after their interests. But I’d still name the castellan, and after your grandfather gave his money to raise an army against me, your kinsmen aren’t going to be welcome in the North.”

“Oh, that’s fine!” she said, eager and urgent. “I don’t mind that.”

He had to fight down the impulse to laugh, which was leavened with pity and a touch of anger on her behalf: it didn’t truly surprise him to know that it was a miserable life to be a girl in Walder Frey’s household. “How long until you’re certain one way or another?” he asked her.

She bit her lip. “Another week or two?” she said, and then she gulped and said, “But could—would you—could—if—” He had no idea what she was trying to say, and looked at her quizzically; whatever it was, it had turned her face the color of beets, and then she blurted out, “Could we—make sure?”

“What?” he said.

“Like you did for Lady Yara?” she said, with a wide and plaintive look, as hopeful as a begging pup, and Robb stared at her with the sudden feeling that the gods were laughing at him, in gleeful mockery, like—close friends sitting across a feast table, who surely loved him far too much to be truly cruel to him, when they were going out of their way to hand him one impossible victory after another, but still, he’d broken his sworn promise and he deserved to be punished, so instead they’d found a new way to rake him over the coals: by making him do it over and over, while they watched and snickered behind their hands.

“I suppose we’d better,” he said, half resignedly, because of course it did have to be him: if he let any other man do it, that was the same as giving him the Dreadfort, only worse, because Walder Frey would at once do his best to make a son-in-law of the man, and that was too much temptation to put in any man’s path, no matter how loyal he might be.

Walda broke into a beaming smile, and at once began to undo her gown; Robb helped her with the laces in back, and then she turned around and pulled open the neck of her shift beneath and slid them together down off her body. He took his own gown off over his head, and she bit her lip looking at him with wide eyes, and then leaned in and kissed him a bit quick and shy, as if she wasn’t certain he’d let her. But why shouldn’t she have fun; he kissed her back gently, and led her to the bed—where he promptly got vigorously fucked with enormous enthusiasm and delight.

He collapsed back on the pillows afterwards, having just barely been able to keep up, panting. “Very funny,” he muttered under his breath, staring up at the ceiling; he could nearly hear the cackling. Also, Umber had been right: fuck Bolton; the man really had been a pure cunt. What was there for him to want that he’d had to break his oath and slaughter twenty thousand men to get it? A metal ring on his head?

“That was nice,” Walda said sighing deeply beside him. She rolled over and up onto her elbows to gaze down at him dreamy-eyed, and giggled suddenly. “Oh, Roslin would be so mad if she knew.”

“Roslin?” Robb said.

“She was the one you were going to marry,” Walda said, matter-of-fact, as if it had been a foregone conclusion. “She’s the pretty one. She put on so many airs after you were crowned, until…” Walda stopped and blushed a bit.

Robb sighed. He was meant to feel his sins, wasn’t he. He’d been so busy resenting Walder Frey’s demands—and thinking so meanly of his daughters—that he hadn’t even given a thought to what it would feel like to the girls, to have him turn away from them to marry a woman without family or interest; he’d insulted all of them, from the prettiest one on down. “I’m sorry to have disappointed her.”

“Oh…I suppose I’m sorry for her, too,” Walda said, in a slightly doubtful tone, and added, in a tone of confession, “She and the others used to make fun of me and say I’d never get a husband at all, because he wouldn’t want the cost of feeding me. And then that’s how I got a lord,” she finished, with so much cheerful satisfaction that he couldn’t help but grin back at her. “Well, I just didn’t see the use of being hungry all the time!” she answered it. “I like food. Why shouldn’t I eat?”

And then she put her fingers on his thigh and walked them up tentatively towards his hip, peeking at him from under her lashes. Robb let out a helpless snort of laughter. “Oh, you can have seconds and thirds all you like,” he said, and caught her by the waist and rolled her over for another round.

Chapter Text

Robb felt deeply, guiltily better when he left the Dreadfort again, after three weeks of every kind of gluttony, even though he had no idea what he’d say to Talisa when he came home this time. It had served him, but it hadn’t saved the lives of six thousand men, either. Mother would have brained Father with a fireplace poker, and Robb wasn’t entirely certain that she wouldn’t do it to him even if Talisa didn’t. He was even less certain that he wouldn’t deserve it.

He was certain he didn’t deserve the welcome he got when he came back to Winterfell: Talisa came down into the courtyard to meet him, trailed by two enormous scimitar-wielding guards, in a gown like he’d never seen, made of deep blue Northern wool embroidered with gold, slashed with panels of translucent silk in rich sunset colors of orange and gold and flame that gave hints of her body beneath, and her hair woven up into a headdress with more golden silk; his mouth went dry when he saw her, and she gave him a half-embarrassed, half-pleased smile that widened at his expression.

But he didn’t have a chance to speak with her privately at first—probably just as well for the gown’s sake. “Harald Karstark is here,” Talisa said softly, when he’d kissed her, and his stomach tightened. “He arrived three days ago.”

“We’ll receive him in an hour’s time, in the Great Hall, before the court,” he said, and went to bathe.

He dressed formally, in fine wool and silk, and wore the crown his men had forged him during the war in the south. He hadn’t put it on more than a dozen times since he’d been crowned with it; he’d felt a little too much like a boy playacting in his father’s cloak, and he’d felt that way too often even without wearing it. But today when his squire brought it to him and set it on his head, and he looked at himself in the glass, for the first time he didn’t feel even a little like a fraud, and Father wasn’t standing there behind his shoulder anymore, a silent watching shadow of judgement. Strangely, it felt like a loss.

Robb went down to the court. Mother had put the sellswords he’d left her to good use and hard work, along with the six chests of gold that Lord Cerwyn had hastily sent, and the Great Hall at least was in fine state, all the broken furniture replaced now with new tables and benches of heavy carved wood, set against the walls to clear the floor at the moment. Sansa had led the women of the household in making grey direwolf banners to line the walls; they were narrow, and made only plainly from thick undyed wool, but at least the walls weren’t bare, and behind the throne hung one she’d made herself, with a crown embroidered above the wolf’s head in brilliant silver thread.

The court was already gathered. It wasn’t only Harald Karstark who had come: in the month while Robb had been away securing the Dreadfort, nearly a dozen other lords had arrived in person to pay their respects; many others had sent their heirs. Lord Dormuth was there with his eldest boy in tow, looking anxious and guilty; they were standing alone, avoided by the others. Robb was certain that if he asked questions, he’d find that Dormuth had been whispering to many of them over the last months, trying to gather support for some rebellion of his own—and maybe some of them had been ready to give it, until Bolton’s fall.

It was the highest court by far he’d ever seen assembled at Winterfell, even at the harvest festivals. The court of a king who’d now proved his reign in blood, who’d brutally crushed the worst of his enemies, and as Robb walked down the aisle through their ranks, with silence and bowing heads rippling away from him like trees bending before high storm winds, he knew it was fear that had brought all these lords here to show their respect.

And they were right to fear, because it hadn’t been enough, to outnumber him seven to one, and none of them could raise that many men when he had ten thousand sellswords at his back; not even all of them put together. So he could have put any one of them to death, now; and they all knew it, a cold and ominous weight in the room, a heavy yoke he’d put on all their shoulders with the reins gathered tightly into his fist, and oh, it felt—good. It felt like strength, like victory, like the sweet crunch of bone and marrow in his jaws.

So now he had to be grateful in another way for his weeks of guilty pleasure: because they’d made it impossible for him to look down on any of these men for being faithless. He’d destroy them if he had to, but he didn’t have the right to stand on his pride and despise them for having flirted with breaking their own oaths.

He went to the throne at the head of the room and seated himself, and gave a short nod to the herald, who announced Lord Karstark. The court was silent as the man came down the aisle to the throne, watching him go past, the symbol of their own submission. Harald Karstark’s face was hard and weighted down: he’d been Rickard’s middle son, the one left behind at home because he’d had small children. And of them, only Alys had lived, and none of his kin had come home.

He came to the end of the aisle, and stood there a moment, his head bent forward so his eyes didn’t rise to meet Robb’s. Cley Cerwyn was anxious near the front of the room, his daughter’s husband. Karstark’s eyes flicked towards him briefly. His jaw was tight, and for a moment Robb feared that Karstark wouldn’t do it: that he’d choose defiance and death, just as his own father had. But after all, he’d already come to Winterfell. He knelt and said, without looking up, “House Karstark pledges its fealty to Winterfell. Your Grace.”

Robb let out a breath slowly, so it wouldn’t show, and then he rose from the throne and stepped down and took Karstark by the shoulders and raised him up. Karstark stood slowly, darting a wary look; his muscles were clenched tight beneath Robb’s hands.

“As King in the North,” Robb said, “I’ve had to demand your fealty. That’s my own duty to the realm. But as a man, I must make you an apology.” Karstark stared at him, taken aback, and there was a faint noise in the room—not a murmuring, no words to it, only the rustling and shifting of bodies moving in surprise. “Your father gave two sons to see the North made free of southron rule. When he broke the law out of grief over their deaths, I answered him with hard justice, when he’d more than earned mercy and compassion from me instead. I’m sorry for it, and will be to the end of my days.”

Karstark stammered, “Your Grace,” and stopped, uncertain.

“We’ll speak in private, tomorrow, and you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to mend the breach between our houses,” Robb said. “Until then, you’re most welcome in Winterfell. I accept your fealty, and I thank you for coming.” He beckoned to the page waiting at the side of the room, and the boy brought him the plate of bread and salt; Robb took his own morsel, and then held the plate out to Karstark with his own hand, and saw the man’s mouth tremble a little as he took the bread and dipped and ate.

Mother stepped forward afterwards to gently guide Karstark to the side of the room and out of the way as Robb sat down on the throne again, and the herald announced the next man, but the whole room had changed in the span of those few moments, a breath drawn and let out again in ease. There was murmuring, then; the ordinary sounds of the court slowly returning, like a forest coming alive with small noises again after the predator had gone past and vanished again into the brush.

#

Robb said his farewells to Lord Umber and his men the next morning: they were going home at last. “You’re the truest heart of the North, and I won’t forget it,” Robb said, and gave him a chest filled with gold to take back to Last Hearth with him. “Let every son and grandson of yours who wants it start a holdfast of his own, and open up those mines of yours to ten times the size if you can. If you need men, take any of the sellswords willing to become your retainers; my mother can tell you which ones are ready to work. And ask your lady to forgive me for keeping you so long.”

Umber’s face was bushy with frowning emotion as he looked down at the golden treasure, and he said gruffly, “Well, Stark, it seems I’ll have to end my days in bed after all. But at least my name will live on in my house when I’m gone, for they’ll sing for long years to come of how I rode to war with the King in the North returned.”

Robb put his arms around the old man and embraced him; Umber gripped him by the shoulders after and shook him a little and said, “Your father sees you, Stark.”

Robb stayed at the gates to see him and his men off later that day, wishing that he didn’t have to wonder what Father would say if he did see him. He already knew what Mother would say, for she’d said it all, in a flat rage, the day before. After the court had been dismissed, she’d asked what had kept him so long at the Dreadfort, and after he’d stared at her wordless with guilt, she’d pried the story out of him.

“You will say nothing of this to Talisa,” she’d told him ferociously, after she’d slapped his face for him. “If you mean to break your vows, you can be a liar, too. Why should she have the pain of knowing about your faithlessness when she can do nothing but endure it? Thank the gods, at least Lady Bolton will have to keep this a secret, instead of parading it before the world to humiliate her. That a son of mine should treat his wife so! What do you think your men will say behind your back?”

Robb had cringed before her, feeling the attack too deserved to stand up against, and then Sansa had made it worse, a thousand times worse. She’d been in the room with them, and Robb had been urgently wishing she’d go, without daring to interrupt Mother long enough to say so, and then Sansa had said, a little incredulous, as though she’d heard something foolish, “Why would they say anything? They’ll be glad Robb can father children, if they think twice about it at all.” Mother had looked at her with an expression at once shocked and betrayed, but Sansa didn’t blink an eye. “Talisa doesn’t matter to anyone,” she said. “She has no power here. Robb could rape her or beat her or fuck whores in front of her face; no one in the North will care.”

They’d both stared, then, Robb just as horrified as Mother, as Sansa added to her, harsh and unyielding, “And you’re wrong to blame Robb. He’s done the right thing. It’s good for us to have bastards of House Stark ruling on Pyke and at the Dreadfort. He’s taken two of the most dangerous enemy houses we had and made them ours. Who do you think is ruling in King’s Landing? It’s not House Baratheon.” Mother had been silenced with her face stricken, and Robb had slunk away feeling that he’d rather have been upbraided a dozen times over than have Sansa show him that he’d made himself no better than a Lannister.

But after he’d swallowed his bitter medicine, he went to Sansa again anyway, and asked her whether she thought that he ought to tell Talisa, after all. “Of course not,” Sansa said. “You have to punish anyone who says anything about any of your lovers or bastards in front of her, and send them away from court right away. Otherwise, everyone will think you don’t care about her feelings, and then they’ll humiliate her every chance they get. That’s what the court would have done to Cersei, except they were afraid of her,” Sansa added. “One of the women at court once told me that a noblewoman boasted of having gone to bed with King Robert, and two days later, a servant spilled boiling hot soup all over her face and breasts and she was scarred forever. But no one’s afraid of Talisa. You’re the only one who can protect her.”

So instead he guiltily enjoyed his warm welcome home that night, and afterwards was glad he’d kept his mouth shut, because as they lay together, Talisa softly told him that she hadn’t bled since before he’d gone on campaign: she thought there was another child coming. “I only hope this time…” she whispered, unshed tears in her voice.

“We’ll go to the godswood and the sept tomorrow, and pray together for a healthy child,” he said, making a silent vow that she’d not have an unnecessary moment’s worry or discomfort.

He sent to trappers in the Wolfswood and had a full cloak of sable furs made for her, to keep off the deepening autumnal chill, and used some of Cerwyn’s gold to make her favorite sitting room into a more snug nest, with rich silken hangings he purchased from a Volantene trader who unexpectedly turned up at Winterfell, and double-glazed windows, and brass foot boxes to hold hot coals underneath lap blankets.

But he could tell she was worried, despite everything. She was ill over and over through the next month, unable to keep down almost any food, until at last Robb went to the godswood himself alone one morning and knelt at the tree. “If it’s my fault,” he said, low, “because I’ve broken my word to Frey, or lain with other women, I beg you to let me bear it, and not Talisa, or the child. Please spare them, and send me whatever punishment you see fit.”

He trudged back out of the godswood and when he came into the central court, he found a great hubbub: an envoy had just arrived from Dorne, he was told, and he went into the Great Hall and found Talisa and Mother welcoming a young woman dressed in golden robes: Nymeria Sand, one of the bastard daughters of Oberyn Martell.

Prince Oberyn had been sent to King’s Landing for Joffrey’s wedding to Margaery Tyrell and had joined the Small Council afterwards, Nymeria told them, at his brother’s command. “My father couldn’t refuse. But not everyone in Dorne has forgotten the murder of Princess Elia,” she said, with sharp bitterness.

She said that Oberyn had long been certain that Tywin Lannister had ordered Gregor Clegane to murder his sister, with her little children. Mother nodded as she spoke. “Ned thought the same,” she said. “He wanted that foul beast tried and put to death, as he deserved. But King Robert let Lord Tywin shelter him.”

“He was afraid of war with the Lannisters,” Nymeria said, with an edge of savage contempt. “My uncle is, too. He’s even betrothed his son to Princess Myrcella. But my father still wants vengeance, and we know you must, too. That’s why he’s sent me here to you. He hoped…you might think of something. A plan that we could persuade my uncle to join.”

“I do want vengeance,” Robb said, low. “Half of our family is gone because of the Lannisters’ greed. But…I did accept peace terms from them, in the Riverrun accords, in return for the freedom of the North. And they’ve given me no fresh cause for war since then.”

“No fresh cause? After they set a traitor on your house?” Nymeria said, with a challenging tone.

“As little as I like to give the Lannisters any credit at all,” Robb said, “Lord Bolton said before his death that they hadn’t helped him. He had no reason left to lie. If anything, he’d have lied the other way, to send me to war.”

But even as he spoke, Robb already had the plan, unfolding itself in his mind as smoothly as unrolling a map out on his table, both hands in the middle spreading it out all the way to the edges. He almost couldn’t help but see it. Dorne as their ally would change everything. The Lannisters would have to fight on two fronts, and they’d have no chance of threatening either of them on their own home ground; invading Dorne wasn’t any easier than getting past Moat Cailin. He and the Dornish could knock the Lannisters back and forth between them like two men beating a single bully, each one striking while the man tried to guard himself from the other, until he was reeling and either could knock him over.

“But we have peace, now, for the first time in years,” Talisa said to him that night in their chambers, looking at him anxiously from her chair. “Vengeance isn’t a good reason to go back to war. If you won, you’d cut off Joffrey’s head. How can it be worth killing thousands of men just so you can kill one more? And afterwards—you’d have to take the Iron Throne, and you don’t even want it.”

“No, I don’t,” Robb said, staring into the fire, watching armies marching over the fields. “But it wouldn’t only be for vengeance. I don’t trust the Lannisters not to come at us again.”

“They haven’t,” Talisa said. “You said so yourself.”

“They haven’t—and I suppose now they won’t, not as long as I’m alive,” Robb said. “That’s what I won, when I destroyed Bolton at seven-to-one odds. No one is going to come into the field against me ever again, unless they have no choice.”

Talisa got up and put her arms around him. “That’s all the more reason for you to live,” she said. “You shouldn’t go into the field again yourself, not unless you have to.”

“But no one lives forever,” Robb said. “And as soon as I die, all the waiting vultures will come down on our family. Unless I drive them far off before then.”

But he still told Nymeria the next day that he wouldn’t go to war. “Not without fresh cause,” he said. “You’ve had peace in Dorne for a long time. Here in the North, we’ve had war for five years now. There’s many sons and fathers who haven’t come home. Others who’ve been maimed and hurt. My people need peace to heal, and now I can give it to them. I have to put that before my own vengeance. As much as I would like to see the light go out of that Lannister bastard’s eyes as his head rolls on the ground,” he added, unable to stop himself, the thought of Joffrey’s blood as vivid as holding a swallow of good wine on the tongue.

Nymeria listened to him narrowly. “Fine,” she said, when he was done. “May I stay at your court?”

Robb paused. “Forgive me, Lady Nymeria, it’s not that you’re not welcome, but—I don’t want you to think my decision will change.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Then…how long were you thinking?”

“Until they do give you fresh cause,” she said, her eyes bright and hungry on his face. “You didn’t say it was too much of a risk. You didn’t say we’d lose.” And when he still didn’t say so, her mouth curved in a small hard smile, satisfied, as if he’d already promised her an army. “Will you let me put two of my people in your kitchens?”

He eyed her. “If the food’s not to your taste,” he said, but she only flicked her brows upwards, a faint impatient gesture, and he stopped.

“The dragon queen isn’t coming,” she said. “So the Lannisters don’t need you anymore. And maybe they didn’t help this traitor lord of yours,” the words laced with skepticism,  “but you know they wanted him to kill you. And now that he’s dead, you’re more dangerous than ever. My tasters can tell when a single drop of oil of mathos has been added to a sauce of cream, and when greentongue’s been put on a roasted piece of meat. Can yours?”

“I don’t even know what those are,” Robb said, dubiously. He didn’t have tasters, or at least not in the kitchens; he only ever had a man at the tables when he was hosting a feast, with guests from outside the household.

She nodded. “And your wife? They don’t want her dead, but there’s anset, to make the child come too early, or maltisha, to make it grow badly in the womb. Your last one died very quick. Do you know why?”

Robb stiffened. “She took a fever,” he said after a moment. “A few days after she was born. Maester Wornos said it’s not uncommon.”

“It’s very common if you put a little feverbrew on the back of the neck,” Nymeria said. “And then you don’t look closer.” She spread her arms. “There are many ways to kill. Do you think the Master of Whispers doesn’t know them? Do you think Tywin Lannister won’t use them, the man who sent the Mountain to crush a little girl’s skull and strangle a baby boy before he raped their mother to death beside their corpses?”

“No,” Robb said, grimly. “I don’t think that. Put your tasters in the kitchens. And I’ll have a suite of rooms put aside for you and your people. Stay as long as you wish. With my thanks.”

It didn’t occur to him for some time that he’d invited in his own doom. At first he was only grateful that Nymeria spent her days keeping company with Talisa, especially as Talisa’s belly grew: Nymeria was a trained fighter who had mastered half a dozen different weapons, and she was deadly quick. Robb hadn’t expected the two of them to get along: Talisa was deeply concerned that Nymeria would keep trying to draw him into war, and she made no secret of her fierce opposition. But Nymeria would argue with her hammer-and-tongs for half an hour, blazing up like a torch, and then burst into a laugh and kiss her and tell Talisa that the world would be a better place if she had the running of it, and then pull her up to go for a walk in the godswood, or if the weather was cold to dance with her inside the solar. Nymeria’s people didn’t only keep watch for poisons; they also made dishes that tempted Talisa’s appetite: Dorne and Volantis had a healthy trade, and they knew much of the cooking and the spices they used. Talisa soon looked better and more glowing, and the endless vomiting stopped.

Robb was only happy and relieved, and didn’t think anything more of it, until by accident he came back to the keep early from a hunting trip that should have lasted the rest of the day, because he’d fallen through an ice crust into a thick layer of half-frozen muck. He went to the baths, expecting them to be deserted at midday, and was surprised and pleased when he came into the large chamber and heard Talisa’s voice somewhere through the thick mist.

He went towards the smaller bathing chambers looking for her, and then he heard her again—heard her make a gasping breathless laugh he knew deeply and well, in his belly and his cock. And then he heard Nymeria giggle a little, and the soft sounds of kissing, and then sounds that weren’t kissing at all, as he stood blankly in the corridor, seeing a hundred moments in a different light, and filled with the sharp clear sense of having been—stupid, absurdly stupid; he wondered if the whole keep already knew, and he was the only one who hadn’t.

He went silently to the larger baths, and scrubbed himself clean quick and fast, and then went back to his chambers. His and Talisa’s chambers, and he looked at the bed, perhaps a little rumpled and mussed, and tried not to wonder, and did anyway; there was a hot sharp tightness in his chest and his throat.

He understood at once that it was his punishment, the punishment he’d offered to take. And he was meant to bear it, because he could bear it. Talisa hadn’t taken another man to her bed, she wasn’t trying to bear someone else’s children to be his heirs, the way Cersei had. She wasn’t betraying his house, or her duty as his queen. She’d only betrayed—him, and he deserved it: he’d broken their vows first.

Only—he hadn’t given his heart. He’d only given his body, and he’d done it for the sake of his house and his kingdom. And yes, he knew it was a selfish, self-serving line to draw. In the end, he’d done just the same thing she had; he’d gone to bed with another woman, and he’d taken pleasure and given it; he’d laughed, a laugh that Talisa might have recognized herself, if she’d heard it, and he’d taken all the fun there was to be had, and surely it didn’t make it better that he’d also taken some worldly advantage out of it; that only made him more of a whore, and not less of a cheat.

But he still didn’t know how to feel anything but—bereft. He’d never stopped wanting Talisa, loving her; he could have fucked twenty women and still come back to their bed eagerly. But—Talisa hadn’t wanted lovemaking very much, the last week; he’d thought it was only the growing child, some fatigue. But she only—didn’t want him, and he felt ill suddenly, a dreadful lurching that made him turn for the chamberpot, and vomit up a little stream of bile, sour and stinging in his mouth.

He stayed kneeling over it, sick more to his heart than his stomach. Talisa didn’t want him anymore, but she’d been letting him fuck her anyway, because—she had to, because—he was the king, and she had no power, and he could rape her if he wanted. He could have her put to death if he wanted, over this, and the men of the North would likely as not approve of what he’d done: another one of his own boyish mistakes he’d finally tidied up.

Grey Wind was nosing at him, with a low whine in his throat. Robb put a hand into his fur and held on a moment. He stood up and rinsed out his mouth with a swallow from the jug, and then he went out of the room and went down the corridor all the way until it reached the vast north tower, the ancient donjon made of the same cold black stone as Moat Cailin, that no one knew how to work anymore. He went up the stairs and opened the heavy carved doors to the huge, dusty royal suite, cold and empty, with the great stone fireplace formed of a pack of growling wolves, and the wide windows that looked out northwards to the dark silent green of the Wolfswood, and the far North beyond, as if expecting any threat to come from there, instead of along the kingsroad.

No one had slept in the ancient tower since the more convenient western tower had been built; four hundred years? Maybe even longer. Not since the days of the kings. The north tower was so large that it was a long walk to anywhere in the keep but the godswood, and they hadn’t needed the room. The household had shrunk since the Conquest. Robb could still see the marks of small footprints on the floor, from when he’d come here to play with Jon, the two of them half-guiltily telling stories of the Kings of Winter to each other, imagining if King Torrhen had defeated the Targaryen conquest after all, if his bastard brother Brandon Snow had managed to kill Aegon’s dragons.

It had only been fairy tales and childish games. He’d not dreamed then of truly being a king someday. He’d only thought everything would continue as it was. One day he’d step into his father’s place, but a long way off; the girls might marry and go; but even then his family would still be whole. He’d keep the law and the peace, and do the right thing, every time, just like Father. He’d be a man of honor as a matter of course, without having to think about it. He hadn’t imagined how easily it could all be taken from him, how hard it would be to get any of it back.

The strange old bell-pull with its cord of woven metal still worked. When the servants came up, peering in doubtfully, he told them to have the suite aired out and swept and made ready to live in, and to move his things.

“And Her Grace’s?” one of the maids asked.

“No,” Robb said. “She needs her rest, now,” and in an hour everything was done, dozens of servants turning up unbidden to help with the work, eagerly. Robb knew it felt to them like a story, another piece of legend restored to the North, but he almost wanted to protest, to make them slow down. Instead he went out on the balcony with Grey Wind, and when he went back inside after they told him they’d finished, the flagstones had been swept and washed, the hot water pipes reopened, and a fire laid; the best of the new beds had been moved from a guest chamber, and fresh sheets put on. The walls were hung with old tapestries he’d never seen before, and which he recognized anyway: the very same battles of the Kings of Winter that he and Jon had fought here together in play.

The servants had shifted his desk and his map table and his books to the large second room to make a study of it; rugs had been laid down and unfamiliar heavy chairs set before the hearths: of aged wood, carved with crowns, which Robb hadn’t known were anywhere in the Keep to be had. And a thick fur had been put directly on the ground at the hearth, an invitation: Grey Wind padded over to it and curled himself on the warm stones, accepting. 

“Is it to your Grace’s liking?” the chief housekeeper asked, beaming so with hopeful pride that he had to say yes, and tell her how pleased he was, and then at last they all went out again, and he could sit alone in front of the fire, and bury his face in his hands.

He mastered himself after a little while. He was at his desk working, on some of the endless papers he’d neglected to go out hunting, when the knock came at the door. He paused and said, “Come in,” a knot in his stomach: what if it was Talisa? He didn’t know what he’d say, or do.

But it was Sansa instead, her face grave, and when she looked at him, sorry, he knew that she knew. She came to him and took his hand in hers. “You don’t deserve it,” she said, and her voice was tight with anger.

“Don’t I?” he said, drawing in a ragged breath.

“No,” she said. “You’ve been fighting for all of us, protecting all of us. I’ve heard from your men about the campaign. How you made sure to see them fed and rested in turns, while you went out and fought every night, every raid. You’ve tried so hard to do the right thing, even when there aren’t right things to be done. You’re a true king. Joffrey would pretend to be one, when he felt like it. He’d sit on the throne and talk about how brave and wonderful he was, what a great warrior, when he was just a pathetic joke,” she added, her voice savage. “Any woman in the world would thank the gods to be your queen. I know you took other women to your bed. But you even did that for our house, too. If you just wanted lovers, you could have half the women in the keep taking turns in your bed, like King Robert. Instead you’ve been trying to take care of Talisa, and make her happy and well and safe. She has no right to do this to you.”

“Maybe she doesn’t,” Robb said, his throat thick. “But the gods do. No. Don’t.” He squeezed Sansa’s hand gently, when she would have protested. “I’m glad to know that you think so, of me,” he added, barely a whisper. “I want to be that. A true king. A man of honor, like Father. I’ve tried. I’m trying. But it is my fault. I won’t be a coward and pretend it’s not. I married Talisa because I wanted a wife who’d love me as a man, and not as a king. I can’t blame her because she wanted her husband to be faithful and stopped loving me when I wasn’t. I don’t want her to be grateful that I’m not a foul beast who abuses women, I don’t want her to thank the gods for giving her a husband who only betrays her when it’s useful. I only wanted her to—”

He stopped, his throat closing on the words, and he shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against their clasped hands. Sansa didn’t argue with him any more. She only stroked over his head gently, the way Mother had used to do for them all at bedtime, to send them to sleep with clear heads, all the nightmares brushed away. 

He didn’t have much appetite, but he forced down a few mouthfuls of bread and soup when Sansa sent for them. He didn’t want to go down to the tables in the Great Hall. She went and brought her sewing, and sat with him, and asked him questions about the realm and the work he was doing that were so difficult that he had to think about them hard enough to forget to be wretched for a little while; he even absently managed to eat the rest of his food.

And then there was another knock on the door, and it was Talisa, this time, standing alone and pale in the doorway, her hands wringing a little against each other. Sansa looked at him, but he had to get it over with sometime, so better to do it quickly. He gave her a small nod, and she got up and went out of the room, tall and proud and cold, a princess of the North, brushing past Talisa without a word.

Then they were alone together, and Talisa said, “Robb—” with her voice wavering, full of tears, and took a few steps into the room with her hand outstretched to him, pleading, and a sudden wave of rage washed through him, hot and furious. He stood up and took a step towards her; another burst of rage swept through when she froze, trembling.

“What did you think I’d do to you?” he said, savagely. “What were you so afraid of, that you had to lie to me, turn me into a raper in our bed? Did you think I’d beat you, if you told me you didn’t want me anymore? Have you thrown in a dungeon, or put to death? Or were you just worried that I’d take away the crown you fucked me to get?” He threw the words at her like a spear, and some raw and wounded part of him was glad when she flinched back from him, her lips going bloodless, pressed into a thin line. Some other part of him wanted desperately to tell her he was sorry, and ask her—but there he failed; he couldn’t think of anything he could ask her for that he could take, if she held it out to him with both hands.

But he was sorry anyway; the rage was already sinking back into cold ash, because even as he’d said the words, he had to recognize that he could have done those things; he could have done anything to her, just as Sansa had told Mother. He could fuck a hundred women, give bastard children to all of them, and Talisa would have no power to answer it, but he could kill her for even smiling at another. So she’d only been sensible to lie to him.

As she would have been sensible to lie to him all along, of course. If it had been worth lying to him, worth staying in his bed now, after he’d betrayed her with other women, then surely it had been worth it before, to be a queen instead of spending the rest of her life up to her knees in muck and blood and shit, taking care of dying men. A life she’d chosen back when she was only a stupid girl, as he’d been a stupid boy, when he’d met her on the battlefield. Misery rose up choking in his throat. He’d thrown the accusation in her face, but he didn’t want to believe it; he didn’t want to believe her love had been nothing but lies all along. But—he hadn’t known when she’d stopped loving him. He hadn’t felt it in her body. So she could have been lying the whole time.

He turned away, so he didn’t have to look at her face. After a long moment, she said very softly, behind his back, “I’m sorry. I know you’re angry and hurt—”

He half choked out a laugh. “Do you think?”

“If—if you would just—let me explain—”

“Explain?” he said, with a fresh snarl of rage sweeping back in, like waves crashing over themselves on the shore. “What’s there to explain? Do you want to tell me that I deserve it? I know. I broke my promise to Walder Frey, and I broke my vows to you, and this is how the gods have answered me.” His voice was trying to crack as he finished, the rage flowing back out again, the force of it spent, and the dull heaviness of wet sand dragging at him instead. “I asked the gods to let me take the punishment for my oathbreaking, to spare you and the child,” he said more quietly. “I will bear it. After the child’s born, if you want, I’ll put you aside, and give you money, and you can go where you want and fuck who you want—”

“No,” she said, her voice quavering. “No, Robb, I don’t—”

“Otherwise,” he said, speaking over her, so he didn’t have to hear the words she’d say to him, to keep the throne, “so long as you’re the queen, you must do your duty to the North. You can fuck all the women you like. But you’ll be discreet, and you’ll never take another man to your bed. We must lie together to make children until I have two trueborn male heirs, both of them healthy and growing well. After that, I’ll not trouble you ever again. Keep those terms,” he finished, as if he were negotiating with an enemy, “and you’ll keep the crown, and you’ll host at my table, and you’ll be treated with respect as the mother of the next king. Break them, and I’ll answer you as I would any other traitor who betrayed my kingdom. That’s all.”

It was a dismissal, but she didn’t take it; she had been weeping at his back. “No,” she said, with a burst of sudden fierce defiance. “No, Robb, you’re going to listen to me,” as if she wasn’t afraid of him after all, as if she didn’t even have that excuse for lying, and the rage and agony came back as high as a storm wave, something towering and impossible that wrenched him out of the world, made everything around him swim. For a moment he saw himself and her as if it were from the outside, and she was coming towards him with tears streaming down her face, and her unbraided hair and her skin were covered with the stink of another, as bright and clear in his nose and mouth and brain as if Nymeria had left handprints in paint all over her body.

She was reaching out for him as if she thought he couldn’t tell, as if she thought he was a fool who couldn’t see that she hadn’t even bothered washing off her betrayal. A shock of revulsion came out of the pit of his belly, and for a moment he was dizzy and whirling and in two places in the world at once, and Talisa screamed and fell back scrambling over the floor as Grey Wind erupted from the hearth and charged snarling at her, biting and snapping to keep her away.

Robb gasped and took a staggering step forward against his desk, clutching at the wood and feeling as if he’d be sick. He couldn’t speak, but he had to stop Grey Wind, so he had to do it without words at all, only with feeling, reaching for him, and for another dreadful swimming moment, he saw Talisa so close in front of his face that it was almost as if he could have kissed her, but she was sharp-edged and grey and colorless in his sight, stinking of panic, of prey, and there was a direwolf reflection in her eyes with snarling jaws bared.

She lurched up and fled the room, and he watched her go and he was staring away from her at the same time, and when the door shut behind her he sank to his knees panting, shutting his eyes against the twisting world, wondering if he’d gone mad.

Grey Wind came and nosed at him. Robb clutched blindly at him, at the warm solid strength of him, and let his own eyes come open to meet the golden ones and was looking at himself—was looking twice, out of his eyes, and out of Grey Wind’s. He gasped and stared, shaking, but Grey Wind only gazed back at him without the least trouble or confusion of his own, and Robb had the vivid sense suddenly that he’d only stepped over a threshold, to come in to a place where he was welcome, where he was wanted. The love and open warmth of it brought tears welling up into his eyes, stronger than the confusion, and Grey Wind licked his face with his gravelly rough tongue and bore it patiently, as Robb put his arms around his neck and buried his face in the thick fur and wept helplessly.

#

Catelyn would just as gladly have slapped Talisa for being a fool as she had Robb for being faithless. “What a man can do is not what a woman can do, much less what a queen can do!” she said furiously. “Gods above, how could you be so stupid?”

There had been wild rumors churning through the keep all that evening, and after neither Robb nor Talisa had come to the tables for dinner, Catelyn had found Sansa and got at the truth behind them, before she’d come. Talisa hadn’t tried to deny it, or to evade her; she had been sitting alone upon the bed in her half-empty chambers, surrounded by all the places where Robb’s things had been. She was disheveled, her gown come half loose over her shift, with her hair tangled, and she had her hands over her belly.

She didn’t lift her bowed head out of her misery. “Robb wouldn’t let me say a word,” she only said, very flatly, a whisper. “He set Grey Wind on me when I tried.”

There was an accusation in her voice that made Catelyn almost strike her after all; only the child in her belly stopped it. “You are fortunate not to have your head on a spike atop the gates!” she snapped, and Talisa flinched upright with a jerk, staring at her. “If Robb did not have an iron grip upon his bannermen now, they would make him do it, do you understand? And that is if the men of his own household did not simply come here in the night and take you and do it themselves. You’ve betrayed their king, the king they love, whose honor and respect is bound up with their own. Do you think they would let you say a word? As for that Dornish whore, she goes this very night, straight back to her father, and would that I could send him her head!” Catelyn added bitterly. “I dare say she’s enjoying the trouble she’s brewed.”

“It’s not Nymeria’s fault!” Talisa spoke to make a protest of that. “She’s only been kind to me, and my friend—”

“Your friend!” Catelyn said. “Is that what you still think, after she’s led you into this trouble? Tell me, has she told you that Prince Doran has a daughter himself? Arianne Martell, lately turned sixteen years of age, the heiress of Dorne, and she is not yet betrothed. What offer do you think would come to us from them, the moment Robb put you aside? An alliance that would bring us straight to the war that her father wants so much!” Talisa flinched and then looked away again crumpling, shaking her head, and put her hands up over her face with a sob.

Catelyn shut her eyes. She still would have liked to shake Talisa in a fury, but it would only have been cruelty, when the poor girl was already suffering the consequences of her own foolishness. She was only sorry that she hadn’t spoken to Talisa more plainly, after Robb’s last betrayal, to warn her against taking any vengeance of the sort. They ought to be grateful, she supposed savagely, for Nymeria: thanks be to the gods that it had been a woman, and not a man, who had first managed to play upon Talisa’s own hurt to seduce her.

Catelyn went to the bed and sat down next to Talisa instead, and took a deep breath. “I will not pretend that this will be mended easily or soon,” she said. “You’ve wounded Robb not only as a man, but as a king, doing such a thing in his own keep. It will be a long time before he forgives you.”

“He’s never going to forgive me,” Talisa said dully, wiping the tears away.

“You’re both still very young, and time heals many wounds.” Catelyn said. “Do you want to part from him?”

“No,” Talisa said, her voice breaking. “That was never…” She trailed off, and then she said, lower, “You’re right. I have been stupid. But not the way you think, or he thinks. I’ve never stopped loving him. I was only trying…to find something that would help. I thought this could make it all right. I could have Nymeria, just for me, and then I wouldn’t have to mind. About—Yara Greyjoy, and—and Lady Bolton, and—anyone else.”

“He told you of that?” Catelyn said grimly.

“My guards told me, last week,” Talisa said. “One of them found out about it from the men who were at the Dreadfort with Robb.”

Catelyn stifled an exclamation of impatience; what fools were her guards that they’d gone running to tell her such a thing? “And there have been others?”

“Not yet,” Talisa said. “But…”

She didn’t say the words there will be, but even so, Catelyn was bitterly forced to acknowledge, they were true. Talisa was not wrong to think that Robb would give her many more such sorrows to bear. Everyone now knew that he made light of his marriage vows, and many women would be eager to seduce a king. Talisa had only been foolish enough to think she had the right to soothe her wounded heart by doing the same thing that her husband had done to her. Or rather by doing less: at least she’d not given a child to another.

“I’ll speak with him. It will make a difference, that you’d just learned about the Bolton woman,” Catelyn said after a moment. “But…healing the breach will take time. Until then, you must be patient and think of your child, first. You cannot allow yourself to grow despondent or sicken. That is your duty. Do it, and after the child is born, it will be Robb’s duty, then, to come back to your bed, to have another heir. I will tell him so, if he doesn’t know it on his own. And then your bodies will speak to each other better than your words.”

Talisa’s shoulders softened a little, coming down, and she nodded. She said softly, “He said he would. Until there are two heirs in the line.”

Catelyn put an arm around her. “It will be enough.”

She sent for food, and saw to it that Talisa ate and went to bed; then she went to speak with Robb about sending the Dornish woman away. He received her strangely; he was sitting at the hearth with his hand in his wolf’s fur, and there was a distant look in his face; a few times she had to prod him to answer. His eyes were reddened, and Catelyn ached to see his sorrow, even as she knew he’d earned it. But when she’d finished, he said, “No,” flatly. “I’ll not have Nymeria sent away. She’s already helped Talisa’s health, and the child’s. Her people found our cooks were using an herb in the kitchens which they said makes some people descended of the Rhoynar sicken; it might have been what made Talisa so ill last month. Besides,” he added, with a dreadful bitterness, “why put Talisa to the trouble of finding someone else? Better to know who it is than wonder.”

Catelyn could have boxed his ears: instead of having the good sense to send away the whore who had seduced his unhappy wife in the first place, he meant to leave her in place, to show the world and Talisa how little he cared, when of course the truth was that he was on fire with jealousy and hurt. But Talisa would be ready to believe that he didn’t care, and be made still more easy prey for Nymeria’s wiles, alone and feeling all the disapproval of the court. And meanwhile Robb would make himself easy prey as well, for any woman who saw her chance to be the mistress of the king.

Catelyn made him promise her at least that he would take no other woman to his bed until the child was born. “If the reason you won’t send Nymeria away is because you mean to replace Talisa in your own bed with some loose woman out of the keep, I promise you that all the court will take it as license to treat her with cruelty,” she said. “If you fear poison, fear that more! Do you think a mother can bear a healthy, strong child when she is abused by all around her? When even your maester and the midwives will think to themselves that you would be glad to be rid of her, and the child as well?”

He gave that promise swiftly enough to give her some heart: he did still care, whatever he might pretend, and the thought of other women was no allure to him now, at least. Catelyn still went out of his rooms full of worry and frustration, but not without hope for the marriage: they still loved one another, despite the hurts they’d both given. When the child was born, she would try to persuade Robb to go back to shared chambers at once, to be a better father to the child, and as soon as possible to get a second heir: that was his duty, and Catelyn was sure that once he’d been given that excuse to return to Talisa’s arms, their love would rekindle.

She comforted herself with the plan, and then the very next day, the gods took it from her. She was in the solar with Talisa when one of the pages came running to tell her that Beric Umber had been sighted from the gates and was coming back to the keep with a party of nearly fifty men and a sledge at their heels, scarce two months since he’d gone home with his father.

Catelyn at once sent word for chambers to be made ready for them, and food and drink prepared in the dining hall, and went down with worry to join Robb in the front courtyard, where he was waiting to meet them. He was frowning himself as the gates were opened for the company, and then suddenly Grey Wind gave a sharp deep bark, and went streaking out through the half-opened gates as if he wouldn’t wait. Beside her, Robb had drawn a breath as sharp as a knife, his eyes going wide and his whole face stricken, and then he went running out the gates, past his own startled guards, with his cloak shed like a flapping banner behind him in the impatience to go quicker, all royal dignity forgotten.

She stared after him bewildered, as Umber’s men had to pull up their own horses in the road, and then she saw them part to let one come forward, a page or squire by his years— She took a step, her hands beginning to shake, and then another, and then she was running out through the gates herself, gasping with tears running down her face and her arms straining out to reach even before she was anywhere near. Grey Wind came back into view, jumping around in circles and barking with a second enormous direwolf, as Rickon came tumbling down off his horse and into Robb’s arms, and as she came to throw herself upon them, the sledge drew up alongside, with old Maester Luwin smiling at them through tears running down his seamed cheeks.

“My mother near took all our hides off when we got home,” Beric told her, grinning wide, in the sitting room of the north tower that night, where they had all gathered, near to Robb’s new chambers. “There’d been Wildling raids while we were gone. She had only five men at arms left to defend the keep when Mistress Osha brought Lord Rickon and the maester to Last Hearth. She had no one to send, and she didn’t dare trust the news to a letter or a raven when there was so much trouble in the North. So she only kept yelling for us to come back, and tearing her hair when we didn’t. She says I’m to beg your forgiveness that her husband and her sons are all undutiful wretches who didn’t listen to their mother.”

“May the old gods and the new bless her and keep her all her days,” Catelyn said, as she stroked Rickon’s head, as tousled and shaggy as his wolf; he’d grown so tall that he was nearly at her shoulder, her little boy.

It was even more a relief than a sorrow to have him and Osha tell her that Bran had gone north to the Wall, and that they’d heard nothing more from him in the three years since they’d parted: at least he had been alive, then. Hodor had been with him, and the heirs of Howland Reed: as good and trustworthy a man as ever there had lived, so Ned had always spoken of him. And if Bran had died since then, at least it had not been at the vicious tearing teeth of Bolton’s mad dog of a son, who’d delighted in torment.

“Name any reward you’d ask of me, and if I can give it, it’s yours,” Robb told Osha, as he sat beside her near the hearth. “Maester Luwin’s told me everything you did for the boys, and how you kept them safe.” He broke into a laugh, smiling at her, his eyes wet and bright. “A strange return, for having put you in chains and kept you prisoner.”

She shrugged a little. “Or the right one, for not having slit my throat when you could have,” she said. “Don’t know that I rightly need anything but what I’ve got. Roof over my head, food in my belly; Lady Umber already gave me good steel. I’d take a pretty horse to ride, now I know how to stay on one.”

“Well, it’s a hard bargain you drive, but all right; you can have your pick of the stables,” Robb said, in mock grudging tones. “Would you like a pretty keep, while you’re at it?”

“I just got back to this one after four years of trying; why would I go away again? Anyway, seems like a lot of trouble to manage; I’d rather let you do the work.” She made a thoughtful gesture of her mouth. “I suppose I’d take a pretty man to ride, too, now and then. But I’ll find one on my own.”

Robb laughed, but then he leaned forward, his arm resting against his knee, and offered his open hand to her and said, gone low and serious, “Then I make you this pledge, Osha of the Free Folk. You and your heirs, if your pretty man gives you any, shall always have a place of honor at Winterfell, with good steel and a fine horse for each one of them, and meat and mead at our tables, so long as any Stark rules within these walls. And we will never ask any of you to bend the knee in return, for you have proven that your honor needs no oaths to keep it strong.” She looked at him and then gave him a nod, in her quiet way, and put out her hand and clasped his in return.

“Well, my lady,” Maester Luwin said to her softly, with his same gentle and familiar smile, though he looked as fragile as a hatchling bird fallen from its nest in winter; they had made him a couch by the hearth and padded it with cushions and the softest furs, and Robb had carried him from the sledge and all the way upstairs in his own arms. “I can now say that I have lived to see the King in the North in his hall,” his hands spread wide to take in all of Winterfell, “and I am grateful to the gods indeed. How proud he must be,” and she knew that he meant Ned, speaking almost as if he was in the same room with them. Luwin’s filmy eyes rested with a smiling look on a large empty chair standing half in shadow to one side of the great hearth, as if he was so near to crossing over himself that he saw something that their eyes could not. She took his thin hand and pressed it between her own, looking at the empty chair as well, her heart full.

Beric had taken his leave and gone to his dinner and his rest, and the hour was growing late, but Sansa had the servants bring them food on trays, and they all ate there together: the narrow remains of their family suddenly grown wide again, with Rickon and Maester Luwin returned to them, and Catelyn did feel Ned’s presence in the room with them; if she only tried a little, she could imagine Bran and Arya somewhere down the corridor, playing a hiding game, so very close.

Maester Luwin only drank a little soup and swallowed a few bites of soft bread and tender meat before he dozed off, and they let the fires and their voices go low; none of them wanted to end the day, and go to their separate beds. Sansa came and sat beside her, resting her head upon her shoulder; there was a faint glistening in her eyes and a shadow in her face. Catelyn stroked her shining red hair with sorrow, knowing that Sansa also thought of her father, but as she last had seen him; she had spoken of the horror of that day once, and once only, to her and Robb, so that they should know the truth of what had happened, but she’d only done it after they were in Winterfell, because she hadn’t wanted the words to send Robb back to war.

Catelyn kissed her forehead and said to her softly, “Your little brother has come home to us, and all three of you are safe. Tonight, at least, know that your father is at peace.” Sansa smiled at her, a little brighter.

Robb had drawn Rickon with him into the room next door, his new study; Catelyn rested her eyes upon them through the doorway, still full of joy. Robb was saying to him, “If I know Maester Luwin, he didn’t let you get away without all your schooling.”

“I ran away from him a lot,” Rickon admitted, a little shy; he had been looking at all of them with a kind of half-bewildered yearning, and at Robb especially, as if he hardly knew what to do with himself now that they were in arm’s reach again. “He says I’m more a wild thing than a lord.”

“I’m afraid you’ll find me a harder taskmaster, then,” Robb said, smiling at him. “I can run faster than he can.” And then he grew serious, and added gently, “And it’ll be your duty, now, to tame your own wildness, and learn all that he and Maester Wornos and I can teach you. For until I have a son of my own, you are heir to the North. And even if one is born to me soon, I’ll need you to be ready to stand beside him for many years to come. Can you do that? For me, and for the North?”

Rickon frowned a little, as if he’d been posed a hard question, and then he said, “I’ll—I’ll try,” with determination. “If…”

“If?” Robb prompted him gently.

“If I can still run with Shaggy, too,” Rickon said. “We like to go out in the woods, in the mornings.”

Robb grinned at him. “We’ll go out together, how’s that? Grey Wind’s been getting a little soft around the middle himself, lying around in a warm keep all day; he can use the exercise,” he added, and was answered with a loud whuffing of indignation from the hearth, as if the wolf had heard him and understood.

Catelyn heard it with gladness and with joy, and yet also with a first slow touch of worry as she realized that her plan to restore the relations between Robb and Talisa had now grown more uncertain, and that worry only grew the greater, a few days later, when Maester Luwin asked her in low concern about Queen Talisa, wondering if she were ill, as well he might: he had not met her yet.

“You won’t see her unless we take you down to the Great Hall,” Sansa said, cold as an unlit hearth. “I’ve told her to keep out of the north tower.”

Maester Luwin looked over in great surprise, as Sansa walked away, and with relief for the excuse, Catelyn confided all the trouble to him; his face grew very grave as she spoke.

“A strong marriage is like a well-built fire in the hearth, which warms the whole house,” he said, when she had finished. “A hasty marriage, made for lust, without the support of family, will often consume its fuel too quickly, and end cold.” Catelyn nodded unhappily; she knew he was not wrong. “But that is far from the only concern. Forgive me, my lady, if I speak of a matter you have already considered, but…the wedding, you say, was performed in secret, with no witnesses and no public announcement; you had refused your own consent, and his Grace was—he is,” he amended, with a shade of wondering amusement, which her own answering smile shared, “below the age of majority. There is strong legal precedent for declaring the marriage invalid.

“Indeed, if his Grace does not wish to put his wife aside, I would strongly recommend a formal renewal of their vows, before witnesses, and according to the sacred rites of the North. At present, their marriage is scarcely more than a union in common law, at best. Furthermore, if his Grace were not himself the king, the Freys could bring a case against him to the throne, and demand restitution for the broken pledge before Talisa’s children could be considered legitimate in the eyes of the law.” He paused, his brow furrowing into a frown, and added, “Indeed, I could see a reasonable case—perhaps even a strong one—for them to argue that Lady Bolton’s child, if acknowledged, was born of a union that met the terms of your joint pledge and is therefore Robb’s legitimate heir, and she his legal wife.”

“You have taught me to fear worse than I already did,” Catelyn said, in great dismay. “I knew it was a folly, but not how dangerous.”

“Or…it might be a solution, instead,” Maester Luwin said. “Is it certain that the child is Robb’s?”

“We will know better when it is born,” Catelyn said. “But from what rumors I have heard…she has not yet quickened, and she should have by now, if she’d truly had a child in her belly before her husband went to war.”

“Then…” Maester Luwin said, with a small shrug, and Catelyn was silent. She’d only thought of the affair with rage, and had not considered how it was indeed very near to the fulfillment of the bargain they’d made at the Twins: a descendant of Walder Frey’s to be heir to the North, and one of his girls Robb’s wife. And though by repute Lady Bolton was no beauty, Robb had plainly found it no great trial to share her bed for long enough to get a child on her.

“But—what of Talisa’s child?” she said slowly.

“A royal bastard named Snow, acknowledged and raised at Winterfell, as befits their birth,” Maester Luwin said. “Many a lord and king have had such brothers and sisters. It would only be wise to have the matter settled before the children are born, and a formal wedding held. No matter which woman he chooses.”

Catelyn went away disturbed in her spirits. She couldn’t help but feel that Maester Luwin had shown her a clear road that would lead them straight out of their troubles, even to settling the bad blood left with the Freys. And…Talisa had betrayed Robb, and taken a lover. Lady Bolton had been a dutiful girl, who had married as her grandfather commanded; she had been faithful to her husband while he lived, without conniving at his treason, and already a widow when she’d lain with Robb. She might not make them a beautiful queen, but Robb was not so young anymore, to think foremost of such a thing. Perhaps he could be happy with her.

Catelyn was deeply tempted to speak to him of it, and see how he answered. Only—it felt like a betrayal of Talisa, and the child growing beneath her heart, even to put forth the idea. Catelyn had spent too long hoping for that child to gladly see them made a bastard before their birth, no matter what the mother had done. And she’d all but promised Talisa her help to set the quarrel right.

But that would be far harder, now. If the child were a boy, Robb would have two heirs, between Talisa’s child and Rickon, and no absolute necessity to return to her bed. But it would not be wise. Their house had been so brutally diminished. Robb ought to have a dozen children, if the gods were kind enough to give them to him; but however generous they might have wished to be, he couldn’t get them if he didn’t try. If he would willingly go to bed with Walda, and get more children on her, then…

Catelyn swallowed her guilt long enough to speak to Robb of it sideways; she asked him if he had thought of Lady Bolton’s future, and whether they ought to make her a match. “I know she is said not to be pretty,” she said. “But she is the Lady of the Dreadfort. Could she make a man happy, if he looked past it?”

Robb snorted. “Any man who marries Walda will be happy and well-fed in every way, unless he’s a fool, or a foul snake like Bolton was,” he said. “If you want to find her someone, be sure he knows he’s a lucky man, not doing her a favor by looking past it.”

That was far more, and far stronger, than she’d expected him to say; she stared at him. He looked back at her puzzled, and then looked away a little embarrassed, as if he’d spoken more than he intended himself, from honest feeling, and Catelyn drew a breath and said, slowly, “And…if that man were you?”

It was his turn to stare at her, then. As she told him gently of what Maester Luwin had said, his face went a little blank at first, and then slowly shifted, growing more pale and cold and stern until she had finished. “Talisa is my wife, and the child is legitimate,” he said. “I took vows to her. Legal tricks can’t change that. I was already the king. It’s nonsense to say I wasn’t old enough.”

“If that is how you feel, then…you should renew your vows to her, in the godswood, before our family and our household.”

Robb stiffened. “When she’s just betrayed me? The words would stick in my throat.”

Catelyn said softly, “Robb, if you cannot say your vows to her and mean them, how can she be your wife? And without that, the child’s legitimacy is in great doubt. You will serve neither of your children by letting them be born into this uncertainty, both with far too much of a claim on your throne. You will make them vicious rivals, instead of friends and kinsmen.” She paused and asked, “Could you pledge yourself to Lady Walda, and mean it? If Talisa did not bar the way?”

“She does,” Robb said.

“If,” Catelyn said, though she felt as if she were gently prying at Robb’s fingers, curling them away one after another from something he was gripping tight.

He flinched and looked away and said, “Yes. But I can’t, so don’t ask me again. It’s my punishment, from the gods, and if I run away from it like a coward, they’ll find a worse way to make me feel it.”

But the first thing he’d said was yes.

Catelyn went to the godswood alone afterwards, wearing a heavy cloak, and sat down at the foot of the ancient weirwood, where Ned had always liked to come. The godswood was quiet with the Northern autumn, the pond frozen over and the other trees bare-branched except for the dark silent pines, and the scattering of red leaves still clinging. “I wish I knew what to do,” Catelyn said aloud. She didn’t think Robb was wrong. The gods had punished him for his faithlessness. “But must he be punished the rest of his days?” she asked, speaking to the cloudy reflection of the weirwood in the pond. “Would it not be a remedy for him to marry the woman he first promised to wed?”

No answer came to her, though she sat until she grew cold. At last she sighed and stood, and then glanced down as her own reflection moving in the frozen water caught her eye: in the thick haze of the frozen pond, with the grey clouds bright behind her, she could not recognize herself; it was only the vague dark shape of a woman beneath the ice, faceless and in shadow.

Catelyn stared down at it and felt a chill come over her, as if the gods were showing her that Robb had been right. He’d made them a bargain to bear the cost of his broken vows himself, and Talisa’s betrayal was the punishment they’d sent him in return. And the gods might let him make a different bargain instead; they might let him repair his first broken promise and be faithful henceforth to Walder Frey’s daughter. But then the price for that broken oath would be paid instead by the woman who’d helped him do it, and Talisa would go into the dark, she and her child.

Chapter Text

Robb didn’t want to think of it, after Mother left him. But he couldn’t help it. He sat at the fire kneading Grey Wind’s fur, thinking with a kind of animal longing of those weeks at the Dreadfort—the name become all wrong, as if he’d overthrown it completely when he’d defeated its lord: going from one pleasure to the next, drunk and happy and well-fed, just as he’d said to Mother, and it felt like a temptation being held out to him on a silver platter. He could have that here, he could go and get Walda and bring her to his keep and spend the rest of his days happy with the wife he’d promised to take, the wife the gods were ready to give back to him. Still so gentle and indulgent of him, only nudging him a little reprovingly to remind him of his broken promise, which they’d offer him such an easy way to mend, like a kind schoolmaster leaving a mistake written before him, pointing with a hint to just where he’d made a mistake, and needed to rub the slate clean, so he could write in the correct answer.

They’d even given him such a fine excuse now, hadn’t they? They’d led Talisa to be unfaithful, too, so he could feel righteous and stern if he liked, and not a single person in all the world would tell him that he was unjust to put her aside. He knew that most of the household were waiting for him to do it, and muttering indignation on his behalf, just as ready as the gods to forgive him, though he’d committed all the same crimes.

But if he refused—if he was determined to cling on to his mistake, like an angry child kicking his feet who wouldn’t listen and insisted that he hadn’t made a mistake at all—if he stamped his foot at them and wouldn’t give Talisa up, they’d sigh and shrug and let him lie in the bed he’d made—but it would be a cold bed, and they’d grudgingly let him have this one child, but no others, and his court and his home would be a grim and silent place, the dream of his family restored slipping out of his grasp.

He sat there until the fire had burned all the way down to grey ash and blackened stumps, and the cold wind came creeping icy-sharp into the room, and then he stood up and went to find Mother. She was sitting alone in the solar in the western tower, the room he’d made over for Talisa, with her hands folded in her lap, worry and sorrow in her face, and when he came in she looked up at him.

“I’ll renew my vows with Talisa,” he said, and as if she too understood the choice he was making, her face crumpled a little with grief, but she bent her head and nodded. She rose and took him by the shoulders for a moment, and then she gently bent his head down towards her with a hand and kissed his forehead, a mother’s blessing. “I will make the arrangements,” she said. “In three days’ time.”

He nodded and left her and went back to the schoolroom they’d made in the north tower, where Rickon was bent diligent but dull over a page of figuring, with Maester Luwin dozing gently at the hearth and Maester Wornos sitting beside him, catching his mistakes and making him fix them: a pair of kind gods of his own, and Rickon looked as though he appreciated their lessons just as much.

“If you’ll forgive me,” Robb said, “I’ll steal my brother for a while,” and they took Grey Wind and Shaggy and went back out into the woods together, and Robb filled his lungs with clean cold air and his mind with nothing but running, as long as he could.

When they stopped at last, panting, he realized in blank surprise, staring back at the distant towers of Winterfell rising against the pale sky in the distance, that they’d come all the way to the watchtower hill: a half day’s ride, he would have said, and that with fresh horses at a good pace. Rickon was breathing hard and glowing pink-cheeked with the cold, but his eyes were bright with wild joy, and he smiled at Robb wide and said in delight, “You can do it too.”

“What?” Robb said.

“Run with the wolves,” Rickon said. “Why did we go so slow this morning?”

Robb stared at him: that morning they’d gone running for an hour at what he’d have called a blistering pace; he’d felt half-mortified at having Rickon always ahead of him, wondering if he’d got too soft around the middle himself, but he’d thought his lungs would burst if he’d gone any quicker. “I don’t know how we did this,” he said, and then looked back at Winterfell, at least six hours’ walk away. “I’d better hope I can work it out again before it gets dark.”

It took them three hours to get back: two and a half of them for Robb to go falling over logs and into brambles and tripping into streams and collapsing breathless and gasping on the ground with Grey Wind and Shaggy and Rickon all prodding him, get up slowpoke, until suddenly between one stride and the next he wasn’t running anymore, he was just going, where he wanted to go, every part of his body moving together as it ought, and then they were going together, a pack flowing easily through the world, through their world, dark trees and pooling shadows and crisp leaves and bright cold snow. They all wanted to go on running forever, but when he took them for home, they followed his lead, and came out beneath the walls of the godswood just as the sun was finally going down. Without even thinking of it, Robb jumped for the top of the ancient wall and pulled himself up and over with the wolves leaping it clean and Rickon scrambling up beside him. They dropped inside and Robb slung an arm around Rickon’s neck laughing aloud as they went back into the keep, staggering a little; his legs felt as wobbly as a newborn lamb. “All right,” he said. “I admit it. It’s better than figuring.”

Rickon laughed with him, and they went to the kitchens and begged the cooks for food just like when they’d been children trying to wheedle sweetrolls, only now he was the king, so they let him have everything he wanted without even scolding, and the two of them ate an entire hindquarter of only half-roasted venison between them, tossing bloody chunks and bones to the wolves as they tore through it. Robb sat back and licked his fingers and looked at the wreckage of what ought to have fed twelve hungry men and said to Rickon ruefully, “We’re going to have to do our own hunting.”

He felt better, gratefully so, and he stroked Grey Wind’s back as they walked back into the keep. Rickon went back to his figuring with a good spirit, despite the late hour, and Robb walked back to his chambers. But when they turned into the corridor, Grey Wind’s ears swiveled forward, and he growled deeply in his throat. Robb halted, his own face hardening with rage as he took the scent himself.

He could have called for the guards at the end of the corridor, but he didn’t want to. He went to the door and jerked it open, not quite believing that she’d be so stupid as to come and put herself in reach of his hands, but Nymeria really was there, standing openly in the middle of the room. She’d even amused herself while she waited by throwing a knife at the tapestry on the wall that showed the Battles of the Seven Towers, frayed threads showing where she’d hit the crowned head of King Brandon Silverhand where he appeared in each of the battles. She was just jerking the little blade out again when he came in.

“My mother wanted me to cut off your head and send you back to your father in pieces,” Robb said, savagely. “Shall I do that?”

She finished and turned glaring at him with the little blade twirling over her fingers. “What, you’re not just going to set your wolf on me? I hear you like doing that to women who make you angry by opening their mouths.”

Robb stared at her, his breath almost shocked out of him, and the world around her began to harden into glittering-sharp grey; he wasn’t sure if Grey Wind growled, or he did, muscles and killing rage gathering together. “Then maybe you should shut yours and get out,” he said, a snarling.

She only went on staring back at him with her mouth a thin hard line, as if she thought she had cause for anger. “Talisa really thought you’d let her explain. I didn’t want her to go anywhere near you. I told her she was being a fool, that we had to run, at once. I told her I’d ask my uncle to give her sanctuary in Dorne, I’d hide her from you. But she wouldn’t come. Because she loves you,” and she said it like a curse.

“Does she?” he said in a murderous growl, feeling something almost like fascination as he came another slow step into the room towards her; he could scarcely believe her, coming here to say anything to him at all. He wanted to take her by the throat and thrash her to death. He thought if she didn’t flee before he reached her, he might do it. “She’s found a strange way to show it, then.”

“Not as strange as you,” Nymeria said, a hissing accusation, yielding no ground. “Every time she’s had a child coming, you run off and find another woman and put one in them, too, and then you make sure everyone in the world knows about it. Knows just how much better it would be for you, for all of them, if only she’d get on with dying and getting out of your way. Oh, but she’s the whore,” and he froze, his stomach clenching into a hard knot.

“I would have drunk slow poison and slit your cock in half, the very first time you tried to come back to my bed,” Nymeria said, venomously. “I’d be putting bloodfire in your wine, a little every night, so you’d burn to death from the inside out. I wanted to do it for her, when she found out you’d done it again. But she only wanted me to hold her while she cried.” Her face contorted with a grimacing of hate. “I had to kiss her or kill you, and she wouldn’t let me kill you.”

And Robb still wanted to kill her, he wanted to tear Nymeria limb from limb, but he couldn’t move. He felt as if she’d done it, put that slow burning poison in his veins, because she’d made him see it with his own eyes: Talisa sobbing softly into her hands because her husband had betrayed her all over again, and turning into Nymeria’s arms wanting only to have someone in the world care, about her grief, her pain, about her.

“It’s almost funny, isn’t it? How desperate you are to make sure she knows she’s not good enough for you.” Nymeria said. “How she should be grateful that you married her. How you made such a mistake. You found a woman who was brave enough to walk away from the whole world to make it better, and you think she’s beneath you.”

She came towards him, then, in a sudden striking rush, and stopped within arm’s reach. But he still couldn’t move. “She’s worth a thousand of you; she’s worth more than you and your family and your entire court put together,” Nymeria said, her eyes burning into his. “You can pretend all you want, all day and all night, but none of it is true. Your name, your house, your crown. Men bending the knee before you as if you deserve it. It’s all just lies. I know. My name is Sand, but my father never let me think that I was anything but his true daughter. When the world tried to tell me I wasn’t, he made certain I knew they were lying. He taught me what to think of men who tell those lies, who think that it’s anything real about the women, about the children, when the truth is just that they’re selfish pigs who only want a wet hole to put their cock in.

“And the truth about you is, you’re not a king at all,” she said, spitting out the word. “There’s no such thing in the world as a king. You’re just a man. You eat and shit and sleep and fuck like all the rest of us, you were born a screaming baby and you’ll die in pain, and the only special thing about you is that you’re good at killing. People will bend their knees and say Your Grace to you as long as you kill people for them, but you’ll never do anything half as good in all of your days as your wife, who gave away everything she had to heal the sick and will talk herself blue in the face trying to make you love worthless people instead of hate them.”

She stopped still glaring fury up into his face as if she was waiting for him to say something, to do something, and perhaps she was, because when he didn’t, she spat at him, “Well? Aren’t you going to throttle me for telling you so? Won’t you tell your wolf to rip open my belly?”

But he couldn’t do that; he couldn’t find a single word, and he couldn’t kill her after all, because Talisa had wept in her arms, from the hurt he’d given, and he had let the world tell him that lie, that he’d married badly—because he had, he’d married badly for the world, for the world that told those lies. And those lies mattered; they could kill his family and his people; just like the lie that he was a king also mattered, because it could let him save them. But he had let himself believe the lie, as if it were something real, when the truth was he’d married as well as any mortal man could: he’d met a woman, brave and kind, who made his heart leap and his body stir, and she’d loved him back and promised to make a home and a family with him, and what more was there in the world for a man to want?

So he didn’t say anything, and with bared teeth Nymeria lunged the knife towards him and stopped it barely an inch away from his chest as if she wanted to try and cut him apart with the little blade. When he only stared down at her, she stood a moment longer glaring, and then she just as suddenly whipped away from him back into the room, her hand clenched tight around the hilt, the other one flexing.

“When your mother came, Talisa was so happy she cried,” she said, her back to him. “He’ll forgive me, she said. Like you shouldn’t be on your knees to her! I told her you’d just go on doing it. She didn’t care. You loved her, and that would be enough. He is special, she said,” and Nymeria made a sneering mockery of the words, dripping with poison. “She thanked me for caring about her, as if that wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. She told me she had to ask me to go. To leave her to you, to let you keep treating her like a whore, like an inconvenience. So I came here to kill you instead.” She made a grimace of contempt, holding out her own left hand. “You’re a man. You’d look at the knife, and you wouldn’t see the fingernails.” She was right, but he looked at them now, and saw the thin green line painted on the insides.

She was staring at them. “I’d kill you, and then I’d go on to the Dreadfort and kill your Frey whore and the child you gave her—and then your house would need Talisa and her child. Then they’d have to care about her. The way you should have,” and her voice was full of savage frustration, because he hadn’t given her the excuse.

Robb stood staring at her, caught between horror and wonder, understanding like a sunrise: the gods hadn’t been being gentle with him at all. They’d been putting him to the fire, to see if he’d make himself worth anything at all, or if he’d choose to betray his wife and break his vows—his true vows, the ones he’d made before them of his own free will, an honest man to an honest woman, and not the promise extorted from him by a miserable greedy old man, who’d taken cruel advantage of a boy desperate to save his family.

He turned and went out of the room and went through the corridors back into the western tower, to the chambers he’d shared with Talisa, and when he opened the door, he found her there kneeling by the window seat with her head bowed over her hands. She looked around at him, and Nymeria had been right: it was the easiest thing in the world to care, to go to her, to catch her hands and kiss her and tell her softly, “I’m sorry,” and hear her say through tears, “I am too,” and he lifted her up and carried her to the bed and held her there while she wept softly in his arms, until she fell asleep, gone limp with the exhaustion of worry and unhappiness.

#

They woke early in the morning, before the late-autumn sun had come up, and spoke together a long time with soft voices. “Mother and Sansa told me I should keep it from you,” he said. “And…perhaps they’d have been right, if I could have kept it from you, but I should have known I couldn’t. Walda asked me because she didn’t want to go home to her grandfather’s house. And I said yes, because I didn’t want a quarrel among my guard over the Dreadfort. It’s not much of a reason,” he added, ashamedly.

Talisa put her fingers on his lips and said, low, “It is. She didn’t want to go back to that horrible man who treats his daughters like cows to be traded. I don’t blame her. I’m glad you helped her.”

He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face and said, “Are you trying to heap coals of fire on me? Be angry at me,” and she gave a small flinch and he understood with sharp regret: he’d made her fear his anger.

He sat up and drew her into his lap, and kissed her, and said, “I didn’t mean to set Grey Wind on you. A…strange thing happened,” and when she looked at him puzzled, he paused and looked over at the door, and saw it from the outside, and showed Grey Wind how to rear up and work the latch with his forelegs; it swung open and Grey Wind padded inside and then nosed the door shut behind him when Robb let him know what he wanted.

Talisa stared with wide bewildered eyes, and looked back at Robb. “Rickon can do it too,” he said. “It’s as if we’re sharing their minds. And Grey Wind…” He paused and then he said, low, “He…smelled her on you. From the baths. And it wasn’t like smelling is for us. It was as if I could see her hands on you. And then—he felt what I did, and only tried to make it stop. I didn’t know what was happening,” he added. “I thought I had gone out of my head.”

Grey Wind came over to the bed to sniff at them, pleased that Robb’s scent was back on Talisa where it was meant to be, stronger than the other lingering smells. After a moment, Talisa tentatively reached out and touched him again, and he licked her hand. He went over to the warm stones of the hearth, although he nosed around it with dissatisfaction, because it didn’t have his good new rug that he liked, and the room smelled worse, too many rotten stinks coming in from the windows on the courtyard, and in the distance the tanning vats and the coal fires of the forge, instead of the cold crisp air blowing in from the Wolfswood.

“Yes, all right, we’ll go back,” Robb told him, and then he hesitated, and asked Talisa, “Would you mind, moving to the north tower? If you’d rather keep these chambers—”

She only smiled at him tremulously, and said softly, “As long as I’m with you,” and kissed him, and cuddled in against his shoulder.

He kissed her forehead, relieved: it was already his den, in his mind, and he wanted to take his mate back to it and tuck her in and keep her safe and warm—and happy, and he grimaced and made himself say, stifling the still-vivid growl of jealousy in his belly, “And you don’t need to send Nymeria away. So long as she keeps her hands to herself from now on.” Talisa went still against him and looked up. “She told me you asked her to leave. While she was giving me the tongue-lashing of a lifetime,” he added, a little wry; he could feel easier about it in his mind now with Talisa back in his arms where she belonged. “I don’t know what Oberyn wants with an army. He should just arrange to shut Tywin in a room with her and let her have at him.”

Talisa choked out a burst of a giggle, a little high-pitched. “Robb…are you sure? I don’t…” 

He sighed. “She wasn’t wrong about it all. The truth is, half the world will still be trying to make me put you aside until our eldest son gets old enough to start resenting it, and makes them afraid to do it,” he said. “And it’s more than that. We live with my family, in my home, in my kingdom. The guards your father sent aren’t enough. I want you to have a friend, an ally, who’ll have you first in their heart,” and Talisa kissed him, and put her arms around him.

He felt satisfied with himself for the better part of the next month, and then one morning one of the gate guards came and told him a party of ironborn were coming to Winterfell along the kingsroad, under his flag and their own, an envoy from Yara. He came down into the courtyard to greet them, and then stared in dismay as Yara herself rode in through the gates at the head of her men, with her son sleeping peacefully in a sling across her front.

If Nymeria could have put poison on her eyes, he’d surely have been writhing in mortal agony in the hall that very hour. Mother glared nearly as much, greeting Yara with icy coldness, but that lasted only until Yara, cheerfully impervious, deposited little Rheon directly in her arms, and the boy looked up at her with a wide gap-toothed grin and blue eyes; then she defected to the enemy at once, which was almost worse.

Sansa still hadn’t forgiven Talisa for her betrayal, and would gladly have had Nymeria sent all the way back to Dorne slung head-down over a donkey, if not without a head at all; she welcomed Yara with a little too much grace and made herself a doting aunt at once. The boy was toddling about the keep in a new tunic by the very next day, embroidered with a kraken whose arms made the head of a direwolf if you squinted at it from afar. “Do you think so?” she only said, with limpid innocence, when Robb caught her aside to hiss a protest; she’d surely stayed up half the night to make it so quick.

Talisa took it all with quiet dignity, but that night when she came to their rooms, she smelled of tears, and of Nymeria, and he only barely managed to keep Grey Wind from voicing the growl he wanted to let out himself: at least it was only on her clothes, and not her skin. “I’m sorry,” he said instead. “She won’t stay long,” and Talisa managed a smile at him, and said softly, “It’s all right,” but he knew that it wasn’t.

He’d been determined to make little Rheon welcome in Winterfell, but he couldn’t bear to see her so wounded. He understood far better than he ever had before, how Father had allowed Mother to show such coldness to Jon: how could he have asked anything else of her, when he’d known that he’d wronged her? And it was worse, not better, that Talisa wasn’t even complaining to him—that she didn’t have House Tully standing at her back, ready to defend her rights.

He took Yara aside alone the next morning, into his study, and told her bluntly that she had to go. But in answer she cocked her head at him, with a faintly exasperated air, and said, “No, Stark, you have to stop keeping me away from your wife. Between you and that Dornish cunt, it’s like trying to get through the Sunless Shoals. I haven’t managed to say four words to her together yet.”

“What?” Robb said, taken aback.

“You think I came here with Rheon in tow for the fun of it?” she said. “I heard about the Bolton woman last month. You just had to piss on his corpse, didn’t you.” Robb opened his mouth to protest, but Yara raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him and he couldn’t get the words out past the inner squirming suspicion that maybe that had been one of the reasons. “So much for your wife’s feelings.”

“Oh, fuck off, Yara” he said, in irritation that was only the greater because there was too much justice to her reproofs; but he wasn’t going to take it from her. “And you thought you’d help, I suppose, by turning up?”

“You need someone’s help,” she said. “It would’ve been all right for us, I wasn’t going to bring Rheon to parade around in front of her, but now you’re fucked. If this one’s a boy, you’re going to have to foster him, unless you want someone else to get their hands on him and put the idea in his head that he should be King in the North someday. You’ll have a hard time keeping it out.”

And she was right, of course; even as she said the words he knew it, with a sinking in his belly. Even if he put a trusted castellan in the Dreadfort, to oversee the boy’s education, it would be too much of a risk: everyone close to him would have too great a temptation to seek his advancement, and their own with it. Yara shook her head. “Yeah, but you can’t have me visiting for a week? What if she loses this one, too, and Walda Frey doesn’t?”

Robb flinched away from the dreadful chance he’d been trying not to think of. She snorted. “So you thought you’d just stick your head in the sand and hope it went away. Bet you told her you’d never do it again, too.” He glared at her, but there was too much dismay behind it, blunting the force, and she knew it; she rolled her eyes at him and put her boots up on the desk and told him, “Give me a drink and thank your fucking tree gods I’m here; you’re going to owe me the rest of those longboats for this,” and after a moment wavering on the edge of fury, he snarled under his breath and got her the drink after all, because he feared that she might be right.

He didn’t understand at first what Yara meant to do, even when she began inventing excuses six times daily why Talisa had to bear her company, or help her with some little difficulty among her men, or come do something for Rheon; he thought she was only trying to make Talisa used to her presence. But then one day she insisted on being taken to the godswood for a stroll after dinner, and Talisa came hurrying back from the excursion red-faced and dismayed to confess to him in private that Yara had stolen a kiss.

Robb would have gone at once to find Yara, and to wring her neck and throw her out of the keep, only she spared him the trouble by turning up of her own accord and jauntily saying to Talisa, “Oh, come on, you’re a Volantene, not some Northern prude. Admit it, it’s better with another girl,” and Talisa said a stifled, “Yara!” darting a horrified look at him, and Yara laughed again and said, “I’ve never met a man under thirty who knew what he was doing. He doesn’t,” she added.

“Leave us,” Robb said to Talisa, with murder in his heart, and she fled gratefully away to the bedchamber, pulling the door shut behind her.

But when he turned back, Yara was leaning against his desk with her arms crossed over her chest, the broad teasing look fallen away; instead she had a pointedly raised brow, and she said, “She’s not crying anymore, is she?”

It pulled him up sharply, despite his fury, because—she was right. Talisa hadn’t been weeping. He’d learned too well, now, the smell of her misery, and it was the first time in four days that there hadn’t been even a hint of it. After a staring moment, he said, half spluttering, “And you think—you expect—you want to—” He couldn’t even get the words out.

She had her head cocked at him again. “Stark, if you’d just make up your mind to be the ordinary kind of prick who’ll fuck any woman you want, bring them and their bastards home, and expect your wife to keep a smile on her face for you while she cries into her pillow at night behind your back, I could leave today. Can I?” He flinched in wordless protest; the idea turned his stomach. “No, because you want her to love you. So you do have to make it up to her!”

“What, by letting you?” he said furiously; he couldn’t understand what she meant otherwise.

“What’s good for the gander,” she said, unrepentantly, as if that was what she meant, and when he gawked at her in real surprise, she rolled her eyes again. “You have any better ideas? Besides lying to her and promising you’ll never do it again, and letting her lie to you and saying she doesn’t mind if you do.”

“I won’t—” do it again, he was about to say, but Yara’s level, unsmiling look strangled the words in his throat. For a moment, he tried to amend them enough inside his own head to let them come out; he could have said without urgent cause, but—he was the king, and there would always be urgent cause to be found; he’d been married three years, and he’d already found it twice. 

And he hadn’t grimly endured it, either, a penance he’d done for the sake of his realm: he’d loved it. He’d loved fucking Yara, and he’d loved fucking Walda, so it was only a lie, and the first step on that path that Yara had held open to him: to make himself the sort of man—the sort of king—who would please only himself, who would serve only himself. The sort of king who wouldn’t have married Talisa in the first place, but only taken her to his bed for his own pleasure, and gone on to marry Walder Frey’s pretty daughter, and betray her as well whenever he chose, expecting them and any other woman he took to his bed to put up with it as his right.  

He fell silent instead, and struggling, because he didn’t have any better idea, and then Yara gave an enormous heaving sigh. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Stark. It’s only cocks and cunts.”

“You think this is funny?” he snarled at her in a fury.

She leaned in and said, low and barbed, “If you can’t laugh about it, you have to cry, so when you’ve got a choice, fucking laugh,” and gave him a bracing thump of her fist on the shoulder as she walked out, and he did let her go, after all, instead of strangling her with both hands.

He stood irresolute in the study a moment longer, and then he heaved a breath and went in to Talisa, who was sitting in a chair before the hearth, limp and bewildered. She looked up when he came in, and they stared at one another wordlessly. And for a moment, Robb wanted more than anything to lie to her, to himself; he wanted to beg her to lie to him, and tell him again that she didn’t care, because he was special. Only he couldn’t, because if he did that, then he wouldn’t be anymore; he would only be the ordinary sort of prick, who’d cheerfully abuse his own power and his own wife. Instead he burst out in raw desperation, “That woman’s a monster,” hating Yara with a violent passion, for shoving his face into it.

And then Talisa’s mouth quivered, a little, and he thought for a moment she would weep, but instead she said, stifled, “I don’t think you had a chance.” He stared at her, and then a snort of helpless laughter and outrage came rising up out of him, and he said, “No, I don’t think I did,” and suddenly they were laughing, they were laughing together, even though her eyes were wet, and she gave him her hands and let him pull her up and kiss her, and put their foreheads together.

And then they went to bed and in the dark, Robb lay next to her staring at the ceiling, struggling desperately, he knew better than to ask, but he couldn’t help it; he said, a little faintly, “Is it better?”

Talisa said, “No,” half a moment too late; he sat up and stared down at her in dismay and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing, do I?” and she stared back at him, frozen exactly like a rabbit seeing Grey Wind prowling through a field, and Robb groaned and fell back and put his hands over his face and said, muffled, “I should just have taken Pyke and killed everyone.”

#

If that wasn’t bad enough, Nymeria realized what Yara was about the very next day herself, and then she was spitting mad with jealousy. Yara didn’t seem inclined to make her laugh; if anything, she was taunting Nymeria from morning to night: asking to be poisoned, Robb thought. The only good thing about it was that Talisa was even more distracted out of anything like misery, caught between the two of them.

“Is this some plot to destroy the North?” Robb said to Yara; he was beginning to feel fatalistic about it. “Are you trying to set everyone in my keep to murder?”

She’d just turned up at his study that afternoon with an entire coil of rope slung around her. She marched past him into the bedchamber and began tying it in knots around the bed posts and winding it back and forth among them in some complicated pattern. “When I told you you were fucked,” she said, with a grunt, as she pulled a loop tight, “did you think I meant just a little fucked? No. Come here and hold this,” she added, and handed him a long loop.

“What’s all this?” he said, eyeing the assembly. “Are you planning to rig a sail and throw it in the river?”

“I’ve piloted worse scows to shore, lucky for you,” she said, giving him another as she kept going. “Pull those tight. Tight, Stark; put some muscle into it. I know twelve year old girls who could hoist a sail better than you.”

He rolled his eyes and pulled the ropes hard; she took those away and then gave him two other loops out of the middle of the rigging to hold instead. “All right, no; tell me what it’s for,” he said, and she put up a boot and hauled one more knot tight around the bottom post, then turned back, grinned at him wickedly and said, “It’s for this,” and took the two he was holding and shoved them down his arms. At once she heaved herself two steps past him, hauling on the cords that she was holding, and the loops tightened around his wrists and he was dragged bodily onto the bed with a yelp. In one more long grunting pull, she had hauled him all the way up to the headboard, on his back, and she threw another loop around one of his ankles before he could get enough purchase to start pulling free. As she got it secured, she turned and pointed sternly at Grey Wind, who’d got up from the hearth and come to investigate, and said, “Don’t you even think about it, you mangy weasel-eater.” He whined at her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Robb said, trying to get loose; but the cords—the cords he’d tightened for her—wouldn’t budge, and then Yara got his other ankle tied down and he couldn’t move at all.

“The gods love you and you’re the luckiest man in the world, stop complaining and don’t give yourself rope burns,” she said. “You, make yourself useful,” she added to Grey Wind. “Go get Talisa,” and Robb stopped struggling and said in sudden wariness, “What are you doing?”

She came and leaned against the post at the head of the bed and gave him a leering once-over that made him want to break loose and grab her by the throat and also made his cock jump. “What d’you think I’m doing? Now be a smart boy and send him to go get the girl.” Grey Wind turned and did go; Robb felt his face go red as Yara smirked down at him some more. “There, I knew you weren’t a complete fool.”

He glared at her as hard as he could, which wasn’t very. “I don’t know what you have in mind—” he said, trying to make it an angry protest, but the trouble was, he had a sneaking feeling he might like to find out.

She bent down towards him and said, “Pay attention, Stark. You’re about to learn how to show a woman a really good time.”

“While I’m tied up?” he said through his teeth.

“Just keeping you from getting in your own way,” she said cheerfully, and then Talisa came into the room with Grey Wind on her heels herding her, looking puzzled. She froze staring on the threshold, darting a look between them.

Yara went over to her and took her face in her hands and then kissed her, long and passionately; Robb strained indignantly against the ropes as Talisa made a squawk and pulled free, but before she could retreat any further, Yara caught her by the shoulders and said, “Come on. What else is there to do? Sit in a corner and cry? Why the fuck would you do that when you could do this instead? Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to,” she added. “Either of you! That’s why you’re here in the first place, instead of you in a sept and him married to a Frey!”

And—she wasn’t wrong about that. Talisa darted him a guilty look that matched his own squirming half-uneasy excitement, and Robb meant to put up more of a protest, but then Yara tugged Talisa over and coaxed her to start kissing him and touching him, while she cut his clothes off with a knife that she dragged over his skin lightly as she did. He shuddered into Talisa’s kisses and strained towards her, and then Talisa caught her lip in her teeth and pulled away just out of reach, teasing, and he groaned and let his head fall back and somehow he didn’t insist on being untied, even as they tormented him, for what felt like days; Yara wouldn’t let Talisa get on him, she wouldn’t even let Talisa do anything more with his cock than stroke it with her fingertips while he writhed beneath their hands and mouths. 

He was wild with desperate lust by the end of it, and then Yara grinned at Talisa and said, “Right, I think he’s warmed up a bit, now it’s time for the real fun,” and she went for the bag she’d left by the foot of the bed, and came back with—”Oh,” Talisa said, with a stifled squeak, and Robb said in panting outrage, “You’re not putting that—”

Yara dangled it in front of him smirking and said, “What’s the matter, Stark, afraid you might like it?” and laughed uproariously as he fought wildly and uselessly against the ropes to get at her. “Oh, stop panicking; I won’t put it in if you’re too much of a coward. But you’d be done long before we are without a bit of help.”

“And that’s help, is it?” he said through his teeth, even more furious that she’d suggest that he’d let her.

“This part’s help,” she said, showing him a looped strap at the base of the thing. “But if you don’t want it, you can just watch until we’re ready for you.”

And then she made Talisa sit across his hips, just close enough that the head of his cock teased against her buttocks, and then Yara put her head down to Talisa’s cunt and started to kiss and lick her. Robb began to realize in rising mortification and lust that he hadn’t known what he was doing. He loved to use his mouth on Talisa, loved the way she sighed and quivered beneath him and grew soaking wet before he pressed within, but Yara went at her differently, with quick strokes of her tongue and pressing with her fingers at the same time. And he couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing, but even after Talisa was breathing in rising gulps, her eyes gone glazed, ready, Yara didn’t stop; she kept going, on and on and on, relentlessly, and then Talisa started breathing quicker and quicker, and then suddenly she was making small hiccuping cries, “Oh, oh,” and jerking wildly, almost convulsing, and—sobbing, and Yara still hadn’t stopped and didn’t until Talisa had all but collapsed, shaking and panting. When Yara finally did come away, wiping her mouth, she had to help Talisa off, easing her into a limp huddled heap beside him; she was still shivering a little.

“See, wouldn’t you have liked to help with that?” Yara said, panting herself a bit as she stretched out next to him on the other side, rough-voiced and smug. She reached out and pinched his nipple, teasing it to make him jerk.

“I’m going to strangle you,” Robb said, with a groaning; his cock ached he was so hard. He tried and couldn’t even reach Talisa to kiss her, and he wanted to desperately; he wanted to murder Yara and he wanted to hold her down and make her show him how to do it every step of the way.

Yara smirked and dangled the thing out before him from its loops; it wasn’t really very big, more like one of the long skinny sausages hanging in the cellars. “Two more rounds to go, Stark. Sure you don’t want to join in on the next one?”

“Oh, fuck you, Yara,” he said, struggling inwardly, and finally spat out, “Go on then!”

She grinned at him even more viciously and leaned over to Talisa and nuzzled her neck and bit her ear. Talisa stirred with a little whimper and let her head go lolling back, heavy-lidded and spent in a way he’d rarely seen her, unless they’d gone for a long, long time; she gave a little warm giggle of pleasure and then Yara whispered in her ear and Talisa’s eyes went wide open and she darted a look over at him, and then she went blushing dark and hid her face against his arm as Yara put the thing in her, slid it between her legs and fucked it in and out of her as Talisa gasped, until she took it out again glistening-wet.

Robb nearly stopped Yara again, looking at it, but she laughed and said mocking, “Oh, all right, since you’re being such a brave boy,” and took his cock in her mouth. She sucked him off hard and fast and almost brutal, so good he could barely get the air to moan with before he was coming in furious spurts in her mouth, and she sucked him all the way through it until he was having to stifle a plea for mercy, and beginning to be hard again, and then she pulled off and slid the thing inside him before he even knew what she was about.

He caught his breath on a gasp, and then she wrapped the straps around the base of his cock and his balls. As his cock hardened again, she drew them tight, and when he jerked a little, the thing moved in him, and a deep shocking jolt of pleasure went through him, and when he moved in reaction, it happened again, and his cock hardened more, standing up hard and almost purple-red from the bonds, and he whimpered helplessly.

Yara grinned down at him and then pulled Talisa up and made her sit across his thighs, and she sat down herself across his hips, facing her, so his cock was between them, and she pulled Talisa close in to her, both of them dripping wet and hot on either side of him. She gripped Talisa by the hips and began to move with her, a slow rolling of their hips together, and kissing her lavishly, down her throat and around her face, so Robb could see Talisa glowing in pleasure, eyes shut and her skin sheened with sweat, her whole body yielding and soft and easeful, and he wasn’t sure what was better, to watch or to feel them, rocking against one another around him.

His cock was impossibly hard, like iron, and the phallus rocked inside him with their movements, as if they were fucking him. He couldn’t get loose to make it stop, and he couldn’t even want to; he found himself moving more instead, little by little at first. It made them both gasp and start working their bodies against him harder. He rocked his hips up for them wildly even as it made the thrusting harder inside him, or perhaps because it did, and he hadn’t any idea how he hadn’t come yet, but he hadn’t, and then Yara coaxed Talisa up and onto him, her sweet wet heat sliding around his cock almost agonizing, because he still didn’t come even as he thrust up into her over and over as she groaned, twisting her hips back and forth to feel him in her.

Then Yara bent her head down and put her mouth on both of them, and her fingers on either side of Talisa’s cunt, around his cock, and did it again, the same way she had the first time, so this time he could feel what she was doing, the deliberate steady work of her tongue and fingers like a lesson, and when Talisa went over again, the wild clenching of her was all around him. Talisa was weeping softly afterwards, small whimpering cries she buried against his shoulder as Yara helped her down again, her whole body shaking, until she went limp into a rag-doll sleep.

Robb pressed his nose against her head and heard himself whine deep in his throat with pained desperation, but Talisa didn’t even twitch. Yara laughed and swung herself around on top of him, and then she put herself above his cock and said slyly, “Well, Stark? Ready to come?” in an inquiring tone, as if she were asking him what he thought of the weather, and when he snarled at her wordlessly, she only grinned down at him and said, “Can I hear a please and thank you, Mistress Yara,” and he was done. In wild rage he strained against the ropes with all his strength, and the bedposts that held his wrists broke off the bed, the wood cracking along the seams and gone flying, the ropes coming slack all around him.

He reared up and seized Yara with both hands and dragged her onto his cock, and he didn’t care that she yelped; he tumbled her backwards onto the bed and started fucking her furiously. But he still couldn’t come, and she was laughing at him again, giggling. He almost would have taken her by the throat, and then she reached down and pulled loose the little strap around him, a flooding rush of relief, and then she seized hold of the phallus and fucked him with it, her hips moving like pistons up against him in rhythm with the thrusts, and he went over so hard that his sight blurred at the edges, gone into sparkles, and when it was done, he fell over sideways across the bed, groping in blind instinct to find Talisa’s thigh, just to have her warm skin beneath his hand, and was asleep at once.

“What was the third round going to be?” he couldn’t help asking Yara groggily, when he woke a few hours later. The muscles were sore all over his body and his wrists and ankles had rope marks and his cock hurt and he wasn’t even going to think about how it felt between his legs, because he was afraid he had liked it. He could scarcely move his limbs, and he was still suffused with pleasure, almost drunk upon it, and Talisa was snuggled up against his side with her head pillowed on his shoulder and her whole body still relaxed deeply in sleep.

Yara was sprawled luxuriously across the foot of the bed and was having a smoke; she gave a snort and said around her pipe, “Third round? You out of your mind?”

“Oh, you cunt,” he said, with earnest sincerity. “You’re the worst person in the entire world.”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” she said, grinning meanly back at him. “That was the littlest one. I’ll be leaving her the whole set.”

“The whole—” He trailed off appalled as she got up off the bed and raised up the soft leather bag to show him: it was the length of a broadsword, marked with ten distinct bulges, and the ones at the far end terrifyingly large.

“I reckon she can work her way up to the big ones,” Yara said, slinging the strap over the lower post of the bed. “Go up a size every time you fuck someone else. That should help you decide when it’s really worth it,” she added over her shoulder, as she pulled her shirt back on, and went for her trousers. 

“Do you know, I think maybe you need to be reminded about that little oath of fealty you swore me,” he said.

“Oh, I’m keeping my fucking oath backwards, sideways, and upside down.” She finished pulling on her clothing, and then she came back to the side of the bed to glare down at him with sudden real ferocity revealed, a change coming over her as quick as the ocean going dark with a storm blowing in hard and fast. “Stark, I don’t give a shit if you fuck a hundred women and breed yourself an army of bastards. But if you do let the Bolton brat or any of the others get the idea in their heads, Rheon’s going to be in their way.”

His stomach tightened, staring at her face. She gave a hard nod. “So you’re going to find some other way to keep your wife happy instead of pretending they don’t exist, because otherwise,” she went on, deadly low, “if you try to leave Rheon dangling on a hook like fucking bait, I’ll come back here and slit her throat and make you marry me instead with a knife to yours. Because I like your wife, but I’ll murder the whole fucking world for my boy,” gone serious as slaughter, before she turned and left the room, and he didn’t doubt she meant every single word.

#

And he listened not because of Yara’s threats, but because she was right. And Nymeria was right, and everyone who’d told him anything about his marriage had been right. He’d married a woman who loved him truly, who was joyful and eager to meet him in their marriage bed, the most wonderful match he could have made; he’d married a woman who was no one in the eyes of the world, a terrible match that all the world disdained; he’d married a woman who was kind and brave and full of peace, who’d sheltered him with her love from the horrors of war. And he had far too much power, and she too little.

So it was up to him to even the scales between them, or he couldn’t have a true marriage. He could still be a king well enough for the world, a king like Robert Baratheon had been, but he couldn’t be a true man, and he couldn’t rebuild his family truly either, for it had stood upon the rock of his parents’ marriage. He had to protect Talisa from the court’s disrespect, as Sansa had told him; he had to care more about her feelings than his own pride, as his mother had told him. And he did need to make it up to her, as Yara had said, not just for the times he’d already broken his vows, but to give her relief from dreading the next betrayal.

And the worst of it was that he knew what would make it up to Talisa: her poisonous biting snake of a lover, the consolation she’d reached out for in her unhappiness, not to hurt him or to take his place in her heart, but for her own comfort. Someone who would love and care for her first, before even the needs of the realm, as he couldn’t afford to do. That had been a mistake, to pledge himself as though he were only a man, and free to give himself; for he was a king, and before he could belong even to his wife, he had to belong to the North, and to House Stark.

But oh, when Talisa woke at last in his arms, still languid and drowsy and smiling up at him, his, only his, he still wanted to tighten them around her instead, and kiss the last traces of sorrow and jealousy away, and tell her he’d never give her cause again; he wanted to pull the covers over them and snarl away anyone who’d ever try to steal even a little piece of her heart from him. But they’d both know that he was lying, if he did that: buying himself some greedy happiness now at the cost of the fresh misery she’d feel when—when—he did again give her cause.

So instead he kissed her, and brushed the hair from her face, and then he said quietly, “I’m sorry,” and saw the faint shadow touch her eyes: she did mind, of course she minded. “Yara’s right, and I don’t need to make the same mistake three times to prove it.”

Talisa was silent, and then she said softly, a little downcast, “You already did. Because the first time you made it was when you married me. And…I’m glad you did. So it’s not very fair of me to mind, if you make it again.”

There was guilt in her voice, as though she was ready now to blame herself for having wanted the man she loved to have a care for her honor; as if she thought she owed it to him to put up with any hurt he gave her heart. It made him even more truly sorry, and it wasn’t hard after all, to refuse that offer.

“Aye, but you do mind, and I mind it as well, if you’re unhappy,” Robb said, and drew a deep breath and added, “So if…having Nymeria makes it better…” and she went still and surprised in his arms.

She slowly raised her head, uncertain and—to his shame—even a little afraid: because he’d unleashed such anger upon her, for seeking that consolation before. “Robb…”

“I want you to be happy,” he said. “Also maybe then she won’t poison me,” he added, trying to make a little joke of it, forcing it past the hard selfish knot in his throat, and he knew he was right, when Talisa gave a small wavering laugh and then pressed her cheek against his shoulder hard and blinked away tears, her mouth trembling, as if she could scarcely believe that he did care enough for her happiness to bear with no more than he’d asked her to bear.

“And at least Nymeria’s not going to try to seduce me,” he added to Yara a little pointedly, the next night, in his chambers. He’d asked her to come and bring Rheon to spend the evening; now the boy was fast asleep with Grey Wind curled protective around him, and Robb was hoping privately that Yara might feel she owed him some more distraction, from where Talisa was and what she was doing.

“The fuck she’s not,” Yara said. “What’d you do, send Tali creeping through the hallways to fuck the snake girl like she’s doing it behind your back? Seven hells, Stark. The court will rip her to shreds, and that stone-cold sister of yours will let all your men know that she’d like it just fine if the Dornish girl got dragged into the forest and gang-raped to death, and then it’ll happen.”

Robb sat up, outraged, and even more so because he had realized to his annoyance that he’d halfway been looking for an approving pat on the head, along with the hope of some cocksucking. “You were the one saying I had to make it up to her!”

“Not like that,” Yara said. “You want to let her keep her pet snake, it’s got to be in there,” with a pointed jerk of her head towards the bed, and to his even greater horror added, “And you’ve got to be there, too. If Tali’s in Nymeria’s bed, the queen’s a whore, and something’s got to be done about it; if Nymeria’s in yours, the king has so much cock that he likes having two girls at once, and all’s right with the world. Give her a bastard, and then she can come in here and share Talisa’s bed every night when you’re away on campaign or progress, and nobody will bat an eye.” She let out an exasperated sigh and drained her cup. “A woman has to do every fucking thing herself in this world.”

He rolled over and buried his head in his arms. “Why couldn’t you have told me this was going to happen if I fucked you? I’d never have done it,” he said muffled.

Yara snorted. “I’m Lady of the Iron Islands, and I’ve got sixty longboats and an heir out of it. I’m fine with you having to fuck Nymeria Sand for that.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t arrange to bring her in while I was tied up.”

“Then I’d’ve had to fuck her,” Yara said. “No thanks. A beautiful pair of tits doesn’t make up for everything. Your wife on the other hand, I’ll give her a ride there and back anytime,” she added and smacked her lips; when he lifted his head to glare at her, she only smirked at him. “Told you I could show her a better time.”

Robb saw Yara off at last three days later with a sense of great relief, a very small and grudging gratitude, and a vast and passionate resentment: feelings shared by Nymeria herself. She’d had a stern talking-to of her own, he gathered. Talisa had come to speak to him about it so stricken that she’d taken one look at at his own still-appalled expression and buried her face in her hands and burst out laughing. It was a little wild and hysterical perhaps, and she’d also cried a little, but she’d let him take her into his arms and when her breath had calmed, she’d rested her forehead against his chest and said muffled, “I don’t know how I’ll be able to look Septon Gellis in the face,” in a resigned tone. And then as he was holding her, between their bodies the baby kicked for the first time, and he swung her around and carried her off to bed in joy, everything else forgotten.

A month or so later, Mother finally worked out what was going on and was painfully shocked. She tried to remonstrate with him, but it was hard for her to do it when she couldn’t bear to speak of it openly, in case she’d misunderstood, and finally he took her by the shoulders and said, “Talisa’s happy, and so am I: let it be.”

She sat down and limply raised her hands and let them fall. She stayed a little longer in silent dismay, and then she heaved a breath and said grimly, “The Mother is merciful and loving; I will pray she watches over you all,” by which she meant she thought they were all going to be dropped straight into the seven hells and very likely deserved it, but she’d still do her own best to argue the gods out of it as long as she had breath.

He didn’t feel it himself at all. He felt the opposite: he’d fallen off the straight road that ran beneath the eyes of the gods, and he’d gone staggering through deep forest and tangled brush and swamp and stinking pit, but now—with a little grudgingly-accepted help—he’d clawed his way back out into a godswood clearing, where he could kneel before the weirwood and still know himself true before them.

And he was happy; he couldn’t remember being so happy, not since before the war, and that boy and the easy, uncomplicated happiness of his easy, uncomplicated life seemed so far away by now that he might almost have been a different person. He’d already got over his dislike of having Nymeria turn up in his bed every so often: the two of them had agreed between themselves—without ever talking the matter over aloud—that every one of those occasions was a vicious, no-holds-barred battle to see who could please Talisa better. He rather liked the spice of it, and thanks to the competition, he was starting to know what he was doing.

And he also liked the distraction of it, for Talisa’s sake. She was growing big now, the child kicking and energetic inside her, and he could tell that she was struggling to master her fear for the baby. She went to the godswood and the sept every day. Robb even began to ask Nymeria to come more often, on those nights when he’d caught Talisa staring out a window and cradling her own belly, because by the time the two of them were done fighting it out, Talisa hadn’t the energy left to lie awake for so long as a minute and fell solidly asleep at once.

And then at the end, he had far more cause to be grateful for Nymeria. Talisa had gone into her confinement, Maester Luwin and Old Nan agreeing it would be any day now, when a frantic raven message came from the watchtower near the Dreadfort, one which he’d manned with his own men. One of Walda’s sisters had come by ship from the Neck to bear her company in her own confinement, with Robb’s consent, but in secret Walder Frey had sent along two of his sons, with a company of men, and the girl had opened the gates of the Dreadfort to them one night. They’d killed the castellan and had meant to carry Walda herself back to the Twins, but she had run away from them and barricaded herself into the well-provisioned storage cellars—she’d converted the dungeons of the keep to a new use—with the surviving four men-at-arms, and one of her kitchen servants had sneaked out to come and bear the message.

“You must go,” Mother said grimly. “If Walder Frey gets that child, he will take exactly such a court case as Maester Luwin spoke of to King Joffrey, and have him legitimize it as the heir to the North—as Lord Paramount, swearing fealty to him. And as soon as you die, they’ll make it their excuse to invade the North.”

Talisa herself shook her head with tears in her eyes, and kissed him, and said, “I know you have to go,” and Robb kissed her hands and then went to Nymeria and said in desperation, “You’ll look after her?”

“Better than you will,” she said, coldly, but he didn’t care.

“Don’t leave her for a moment,” he said. “I beg you. I’ve told Mother and Sansa and Rickon, you’re to be with her day and night, and have charge of her guards if she can’t. And—to decide matters, if there’s any—” He didn’t want to finish the ill wish and put it in the world. “I know you’ll put her first.”

She was silent a moment, and then grudgingly she said, less coldly, “Go, Stark. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

So he wasn’t at home for the birth of his second son; the raven with the news reached the Dreadfort the same day that he did, and he was with Walda instead, when she bore him the third, right in the cellars where he’d just reached her.

“Come out now if you know what’s good for you, you stupid bitch!” Lothar Frey had been yelling furiously, from outside the heavy iron-barred doors, after what looked like the latest attempt of twenty at getting through had failed. The floor was littered with bent and broken prybars and badly notched axes, and the dead body of a man lying just in front of the doors with an arrow through his eye and fresh blood pooling beneath his head: a single hole had just finally been broken through the heavy door, but it went both ways. Lothar and Jammos and their men had retreated halfway down the corridor. “I swear to all the Seven, open this door or I’ll beat you to bits every week for a year! Are you listening?”

“I’m listening,” Robb said, murderously, at his back, and as they turned, Grey Wind leaped snarling and bore Lothar down to the floor, and Robb’s men killed half the rest in one single volley: after he’d come in through the kitchen passage, they’d gone to the armory and collected up all the crossbows first.

He got inside to find Walda laboring in tears and terror on a makeshift bed of straw and the soldiers’ cloaks. The maester and septon and most of the servants had fled the keep during the fighting, and the only person they could find to help her was the cook, whose wife had borne eleven children and said there was nothing to it, and perhaps he wasn’t lying, because he managed to get the baby out and in her arms.

Robb found the raven letter from Winterfell a few hours later, after Walda was safe in her bed and asleep, when he was going up to the maester’s tower to try and send a message himself. He at once wanted more than anything to go straight home, but he couldn’t leave Walda all alone. Her uncles were now locked up in the cellars themselves, and he’d sent her terrified sister back home to the Twins along with the heads of all their killed men-at-arms in a sack, to bear Lord Walder the news that Lothar and Jammos wouldn’t be back themselves anytime soon. So he stayed, and stood with Walda at the tree three nights later to hear her name the boy Robert Bolton, and after she was well enough to travel, he brought her and the child back to Winterfell with him.

He did it with a sense of doom, but by the time he reached home, little Brandon was thriving: just past his third week, healthy and growing and eating well, and Talisa herself was peaceful with relief and joy. Robb had sent a raven to warn her, and she was plainly braced to find the formal introduction unpleasant—Nymeria was glaring at Robb murderously from her side—but Walda was nervous and tearful, worried about her welcome, and she stammered her way through greetings and then carried on into what Robb realized to some mortification was an attempt at apologizing to Talisa for having borrowed him: trying to convey that she’d really only meant to borrow one small part of him, and not to take the rest. Talisa stopped standing on her dignity and started trying not to laugh, and within the hour Walda was happily ensconced in the solar with her, while the boys slept in their baskets side by side at the hearth.

Mother remained far more disapproving. “All we need now is for that Greyjoy woman to come back,” she said. “Soon men will say you have a harem.”

“Soon?” Robb said, fatalistically, and got an indignant look for his pains. He didn’t think it was entirely fair; she wasn’t letting it get in the way of cuddling either of her new grandchildren.

Yara sent gifts for both of the boys, cloak clasps made of heavy silver with a direwolf head as the tongue and the loop different for each one: the crown of swords for Brandon, and the great tower gate of the Dreadfort for Bert. Robb got a note tucked in with them: Well done, Stark; good luck with the next one.

Chapter Text

By the end of the next month, Robb dared to let go of his held breath and begin to hope that everything was turning out for the best. Brandon and Bert had got so used to being together that they’d cry if they weren’t in the same basket for their naps, and Walda had begun by asking if she might help oversee the Winterfell tables and was now gradually taking over much of the household, to everyone’s satisfaction. Mother had always considered it a point of pride to hold her keep as a tight-run ship, but she was glad to share the work, especially when there were grandchildren to be cosseted, and Talisa had confessed herself hopelessly lost at Winterfell’s size. “My father’s house seemed large to me, and it had ten rooms and a courtyard,” she said, ruefully, and Walda said, “We had sixty people at dinner every night and two hundred on feast days. And those were just the family tables,” in tones of unpleasant reminiscence.

She and Talisa were soon so close to one another that even Nymeria was reconciled to her presence, and went so far as to grudgingly concede to Robb that perhaps he wasn’t the very worst man in the world, deserving only of a slow and agonizing death. 

The help was timely; there was more hosting to be done than ever. Winterfell was still battered, but a steady stream of guests continued to come in to attend at court, and many merchants sailed up the river from White Harbor to bring their wares; traders from Volantis had become regular visitors. Talisa welcomed them with grace and rising confidence that warmed his spirits: Brandon’s birth had made her feel far more secure in her place, he knew, but still more, she told him that thanks to Walda’s help, she no longer feared that she’d forgotten something, or arranged something wrongly, and that the guests would be dissatisfied or he embarrassed.

More often than not, he left the work of hosting the guests to the two of them, so he might make headway on the mountains of paper that reared up from the desk each day, and only come down to greet them at the tables at night. Rickon had tried to help him a little, but within an hour, he would take on so woebegone a look that Robb couldn’t bear to torment him further, and it was Sansa who unexpectedly came to his rescue; she put aside her needlework and began to sort the papers out for him instead, as tidily as the sixty spools of thread wound up in her basket, and made it far easier for him to move among them; soon she began to help him with the work itself as well.

They were going through the tax that had come in so far that year from the eastern keeps when one of the pages came running up from the hall. “Your Grace, the queen asks if you’ll come downstairs,” the boy said, and Robb went down to find a royal messenger from the Red Keep waiting down in the hall, puffed up and resplendent in gold cloak and mail. He’d come to deliver a formal invitation to a grand tourney, of all things, to be held at the Bitten Tower Inn, on the kingsroad near the southern end of the Neck, just short of the border.

“Lord Walder Frey will be hosting his liege, King Joffrey, for a seven-day festival to celebrate the naming of Crown Princess Jolianne,” the messenger informed them loftily, “and a great array of the flower of southern knighthood have already enrolled in the lists. His Grace felt that as an act of courtesy, it was only right that you and your court should be invited to take part, and he assures you of safe passage to and from the tourney grounds.”

“That’s most kind of him, to promise me safe passage through my own lands,” Robb said, a growl in his throat. “And how many men does King Joffrey mean to travel with, besides all these fine flowers?”

Not more than thirty thousand soldiers, it seemed. Robb had the messenger escorted to a chamber to be refreshed, and gathered up Mother and Maester Wornos to come to the sitting room where Maester Luwin passed his days now, to take counsel with all of them together. “It’s meant to provoke me, that’s for certain,” Robb said. “Bringing thirty thousand men, ten miles from our border? But I can’t believe even Joffrey would be stupid enough to try and invade the North through the Neck and past Moat Cailin.”

Sansa gave a snort. “Joffrey would be stupid enough to do anything. But I agree. If they were going to invade us, they wouldn’t send a messenger to tell us in advance. They have so many more spies than we do; they would hope they could keep it a secret long enough to keep you from calling your banners in time, just like Bolton did.”

“It is Tywin Lannister who is our true enemy,” Mother said. “And I have no doubt that he hopes to draw you out, instead. This is surely a trap, and you should go nowhere near.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Sansa said. “There must be. They wouldn’t just send you an invitation to your own murder and trust you to accept it. But they’re marching thirty thousand men all the way to the Bite for this, so they must be expecting to get something out of it, even if you don’t come. And this isn’t just about the Lannisters. Walder Frey is the one who’s hosting.”

“After he already gave Bolton money to overthrow me, and tried to send his sons to snatch Walda,” Robb said, with a growl of anger deep in his belly.

“He’s afraid of you,” Sansa said. “I’m sure he’s begged the Lannisters to come up and wave their swords in front of you. He wants to remind you about all that southern might ready to come to his rescue if you decided to go take the Twins. The question is why they’ve agreed.”

“But why is there any question at all?” Talisa said. “Surely Robb shouldn’t even think of going. What for? What difference does a tourney make? None at all.”

“Forgive me, your Grace, but that is far from the case,” Maester Luwin said gently. “Hosting a significant tourney has many advantages, for a noble house. It raises the honor and standing of the house in the eyes of the kingdom. Those knights who do well will make their reputations, and improve that of their houses. King Joffrey and Lord Frey may well use the opportunity to recruit new talented knights to their own service. Jongleurs will sing about the events and spread the news.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Sansa said slowly. “They can’t expect you to come, because it looks too much like a trap. But if they just didn’t want you to come, they wouldn’t invite you and promise you safe conduct. They didn’t have to tell you about it at all. So they don’t want you to come. They want you to know, to be invited, and to stay home. And they’ll make sure that’s the story that the jongleurs will tell. That the King in the North was so afraid of Lannister might that he wouldn’t stir out of his keep.”

“And for that you think they’d march thirty thousand men to the Bite and back?” Robb said, dubiously.

“It sounds stupid, and it is; it’s a stupid waste,” Sansa said. “But I think it’s the sort of stupid thing that Tywin might let Joffrey do, because they do need to do something. They still haven’t got Storm’s End away from Stannis after two years of siege, and everyone in Westeros has surely heard the story of your defeating Bolton: we’ve had at least six different songs about it here. Not to mention that everyone knows you’ve now got three sons, and Joffrey only has one daughter. It’s making them look weak. Joffrey would hate that more than anything. I’m sure he’d be on fire to do anything that he thought would humiliate you even a little.”

“What do we care what they say about why Robb isn’t there?” Talisa said. “Joffrey ordered the death of Robb’s father. No one would expect Robb to come and attend a tourney with him.”

“That’s what they’ll use to make it worse,” Sansa said. “Robb lost the war in the south, knuckled under to King Joffrey in the Riverrun Accords and slunk away to the North with his tail between his legs, even though he had a blood debt to pay, and now he’s done it again. They’ll make his beating Bolton seem like a little Northern scrap, nothing to compare to the valor and steel of the southern knights.” There was a savage edge to her voice, and it matched the one her words were putting on Robb’s temper.

“But with such a gracious invitation, how can I refuse?” Robb said. “Only I’ll have to go the long way round.” He turned to Maester Wornos. “Do you have a raven for Pyke? Good. Send Yara a message: I need to borrow those longships I’ve given her. All sixty of them, with as much room as she can make for passengers, and I need them at Torrhen’s Square as quick as she can sail,” and Talisa sat down with a sigh of worry, bowing her head.

Nymeria came to his study later that evening, and said in tones of enormous concession, “All right, I’ll take one, too.”

“One what?” Robb said, puzzled.

“That Greyjoy bitch was right,” Nymeria said irritably. “If I’m bearing you a bastard, no one’s going to think twice about it if I’m sharing your rooms with Tali while you’re gone. She’ll fret herself to pieces otherwise.”

“Well,” he said, after a first dubious moment, “if you’re certain, and she is.”

It was less awkward than he’d have imagined. Maester Wornos had decreed firmly, with agreement from both Maester Luwin and Old Nan, that Talisa wasn’t yet ready for lovemaking again, and she was regretful about it, and blushingly ready to enjoy watching the two of them go at it. It turned out that the same sense of challenge served him just as well when it was Nymeria he was trying to please.

#

“Why are you looking so glum?” Jaime said, pulling off his helm with a grandiose flourish as he came back into the pavilion. “Did you bet against me again? I’m going to start having my feelings hurt.”

“I only bet against you when you’re bored,” Tyrion said, sourly. “Not when your blood is up, much less when you have the chance to knock Loras Tyrell into the dirt a dozen times. Does it make it even better if you pretend he’s Robb Stark?”

“Oh, Loras can just be Loras,” Jaime said. “I’m pretending all of the others are Stark.”

“Of course, how foolish of me,” Tyrion said, and sighed and drained his very diluted cup.

“It’s as close as I’m going to get on this trip.” Jaime snorted. “And you were so sure he’d turn up.”

“I was not sure he’d turn up,” Tyrion said. “I didn’t think it was safe to risk the king and queen on the chance that he might turn up. That’s not the same thing. One is paranoia, the other is sensible caution.”

“We’re not risking anything,” Jaime said. “Where did you think Stark was getting thirty thousand men from with four weeks’ notice?”

“I thought he wouldn’t need thirty thousand!” Tyrion said. “He’s won at seven to one odds!”

“Against Bolton and a pack of cheap sellswords,” Jaime said scornfully.

“They were expensive sellswords,” Tyrion said, but Jaime only rolled his eyes and took a cup of watered wine himself before he sailed back out into the lists for his next turn at knocking down Loras Tyrell.

Tyrion still didn’t know what Jaime had done on his return to enrage Cersei so badly that she’d let Father ship her off to Highgarden after all. It was just as well in Tyrion’s opinion, and he’d cautiously tried to solace Jaime by hinting that Cersei had found other consolation during his long absence, but Jaime was still inclined to resent Loras anyway. However, that wasn’t a problem Tyrion needed to worry about: nobody had forced Loras to enter the lists. And you couldn’t even call it a surprise that Robb Stark hadn’t turned up to offer Jaime a different target for his spleen.

Tyrion looked at Podrick. “I am being paranoid at this point, aren’t I?” Podrick, holding the jug, bobbed his head from side to side a bit, more or less confirming. “Yes, all right; I suppose I might as well have a real drink, then. Go and steal me one of the jugs of wine off the head table, near Walder’s seat; that’ll be the only drinkable stuff.”

After he sent Podrick on his quest, Tyrion went out to watch the admittedly impressive festivities. The tourney field was just a large meadow—grass already rather mangled—with the trees around the edge festooned with long silken ribbons in the colors of House Frey, and the viewing stands were clearly makeshift work that could probably have done with a few hundred extra nails, but you couldn’t fault the guest list. Joffrey and Margaery were sitting in pride of place, upon large elaborately carved chairs, golden in their crowns and the silver-gilt cloaks lined with fox fur that Margaery had presented Joffrey with against the northern chill, embroidered with lions and stags entwined in roses. The two next best seats, only slightly smaller, were conspicuously empty, with direwolf banners draped over the backs just to emphasize Stark’s absence. Joffrey had insisted on leaving them there even after Stark hadn’t turned up.

Tyrion sighed deeply. He couldn’t actually blame Father for going along with this nonsense. The whole idea had been so dramatically stupid that it was almost impressive that even Joffrey had come up with it, and a complete waste of time, men, and money, but on the other hand, it had gotten Joffrey out of King’s Landing for the better part of three months. Tyrion’s only true complaint was that he’d been sent along, instead of also being allowed to enjoy the peace and serenity of Joffrey’s absence.

Or at least, that was his only true complaint now that Stark hadn’t turned up, a rather immense relief. Accepting an invitation from House Lannister and House Frey would have been almost as dramatically stupid for Robb, of course—one of the many reasons why this plan had been idiotic; who was going to hear about this and think my, I can’t understand, why wouldn’t Robb Stark come south to be murdered—but it hadn’t seemed impossible that he’d have found some way to exploit their all putting themselves in range.

Tyrion spent the rest of the day wandering up and down the field and drinking good wine: a pleasant experience actually. The trees in the Bite had all turned already, a riot of gold and red, and the autumn air was crisp and fragrant with shattered leaves and the smoke of their fires. It wasn’t yet unbearably cold, and in his own fur-lined cloak, he was comfortable. The matches were spectacular: half of the best knights in the realm had turned up. He probably wouldn’t have bet against Jaime even without Loras to pummel; it was just the level of competition he yearned for.

Sadly, all you could say for the dinner, an unambitious five-course meal, was that it wasn’t absolutely inedible. Walder had skimped on his hosting as much as he’d dared when he was serving the king, and he still looked pained and scowling as the platters went around and emptied and went back to the kitchens to be refilled.

Ser Loras looked pained and scowling for other reasons, in nearly direct proportion to Jaime’s smirking glow of satisfaction. Jaime did have something to crow about: he’d taken top honors in the lists and the melee both today, after having topped the lists yesterday as well. He was quite clearly going to run away with the substantial prize, much to the eager anticipation of all the younger knights: Jaime was well known to give the prize to be divided up among all the knights for whom this was their first tourney.

Jaime was sitting on the other side of Joffrey and Margaery from the empty Stark chairs, which had been migrated to the tables, too, in case anyone had missed it yet. Tyrion had been put at a table down on the floor, a deliberate insult that Joffrey had clearly orchestrated, but it meant Tyrion didn’t have to sit with him or Lord Walder, so he’d gladly endure it. The company at his own table was Bronn and Podrick, a couple of sullen Freys who thought they ought to have been at the high table also, and half a dozen senior knights from the Reach. Despite the Freys, they all managed to be reasonably entertaining to one another, and to drink at least twice as much as the high table.

In the morning Tyrion was very unhappy to have Podrick shaking him awake at dawn, and even more unhappy when Podrick said urgently, “M’lord, Stark’s come!”

“What?” Tyrion groaned, forcing himself up and clutching at his head; Podrick was well-trained and had a cup of hangover remedy ready to be shoved into his hand and consumed before he woke up enough to taste it. “Oh, gods,” Tyrion said, having made it the rest of the way conscious, and took three deep breaths. “Stark’s coming? Where is he? How soon will he get here?”

“He’s here,” Podrick said. Tyrion stared up at him and then got up and went outside the tent still in his nightshirt to look across the tourney field at what was, indisputably, an entire encampment of dark grey tents with direwolf banners flying, which had appeared overnight: it looked like nearly five thousand men.

“How the hell did he get past our scouts?” Tyrion demanded. “We have a thousand men crawling all over the Neck from here to Moat Cailin!”

 Podrick didn’t have any answers for him, and neither did anyone else in the rather panicked uproar that started in the main taproom of the inn when Tyrion barged in with his news and started rousting people out of bed.

“We should sound the muster at once! Kill him and all his men!” Joffrey said.

“We don’t know that those are all his men!” Tyrion snapped. “We don’t know how he got here. He could have another ten thousand men lying in wait for us to move on him.” 

The sun was just barely coming up, and they were still trying to decide what to do, whether to sound the muster, when Podrick darted back in to report to Tyrion that Robb was riding to the inn with a large escort, and showed every sign of intending to come inside.

“Let him come, then,” Frey said, and ordered twenty of his men to stand on either side of the door with ready swords and crossbows. Only, not being a complete idiot, Robb halted just outside of crossbow range from the doors of the inn and sent a squire in to explain that he’d like the crossbows cut and thrown out the windows, and the swords sheathed, so he could come and breakfast with his honored host, unless they hadn’t really meant the offer of safe passage.

“His Grace is of course equally happy to oblige you with a battle, if you prefer to break your word and the Riverrun Accords,” the squire added, brightly.

“No, thank you, we’ll take breakfast,” Tyrion said, sharply, glaring Joffrey into silence. “Have the crossbows cut. Now, or I’ll have them cut for you,” he added to Frey, putting steel into it, and Frey scowled at him and gave the jerk of his head to see it done; the squire watched all the swords go into sheaths, and then put his head out and gave a whistle for confirmation, and five minutes later, Robb was walking into the room, tousle-haired and bright-eyed in heavy armor and a fur-collared Northern cloak, his enormous direwolf padding at his heels; a guard of twenty men had come in before him and were marking out a protective space at the door.

“Good morning, my lords!” Robb said, all smiles, bright teeth. Jaime had a hand clenched on the hilt of his sword. “Your Grace,” he added, with a bit of a dismissive tone, to Joffrey, “and of course, to my good host.” He turned towards Walder and spread his arms in apology. “Forgive me for being so tardy, Lord Walder. When your gracious message came, I couldn’t help but feel awkward. Here you were, inviting me to this joyous event, and I was holding two of your sons hostage. So I thought I’d drop them off along the way.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Walder said in confusion, with narrow squinting suspicion, but Tyrion was already catching his breath as he understood.

“I left them at the Twins,” Robb said, and everyone else was starting to stare by then. “Your son Stavros showed us such warm hospitality there, it was a little hard to get away. I was impressed with that tapestry in your bedchamber, the one of the Maiden and her attendants bathing? Such…detailed work,” and Walder’s eyes were bulging in horror.

“You have not taken the Twins,” Jaime said savagely. Tyrion was already planning on having a long conversation with him that would mostly be an extended version of I told you so, and one extremely significant topic would be how Jaime and Father had dismissively told him that Stark couldn’t possibly come at them except down the Neck, because the Freys would be guarding the routes from the sea. Apparently they’d forgotten to guard themselves while they were at it.

“Taken?” Robb said, putting on an air of being shocked. “How could I break our sacred accord, and be so rude to my host besides? Of course I’ve not taken the Twins. I’ve only…borrowed them for a bit. My men will come right out again when we’re on our way home.” And then the smiling all went, and he said to Frey, soft as a direwolf prowling up on your heels, “Or I suppose they could slaughter every last one of your sons and grandsons in the place, if you decide it’s too much of a strain to keep the peace you offered, and you’d rather have war instead.”

Then he turned back to the rest of them smiling again. “So tell me, what have I missed? Who’s winning the tourney?”

He was, indisputably. He spent the rest of the day sprawled comfortably in his seat in the stands, with the direwolf sitting up in the other one, and flirted with a primly polite Margaery while totally ignoring everything happening on the field, except to applaud and laugh at the clowns. Not a single one of the Northmen entered the lists. He couldn’t have said more plainly that he thought it was all a bit childish and silly.

Jaime kept right on winning every one of his matches anyway, presumably because he was still imagining that all of them were Robb Stark.

#

Robb was giving it halfway odds that the Lannisters would come at him anyway, despite his pack of hostages back at the Twins. What did they care if forty Freys died? They had scouts crawling over the woods, looking for any more men he might have hidden, and they wouldn’t find any, so they’d decide they outnumbered him six to one, and surely they would think that would be enough for them, though it hadn’t been for Bolton. Robb could just taste the battle already, and the rest of the war after it: he’d written up the plan of campaign and given it to Talisa, to pass on to Nymeria as soon as the fighting started in earnest, and he had confidence that it would bring Dorne in with him. Uncle Edmure and the Blackfish would raise the Riverlands for him at once, and Yara would start raiding all the Lannister ports and putting their ships to the torch.

Robb had been hungry for a fight before he’d even ridden in that morning, but he was slavering for it by the end of the night. At the dinner, while glowering at him, Jaime Lannister had asked, “Tell me, your Grace,” making it sound dubious, “have you…heard anything from Lady Brienne?”

“From who?” Robb said.

Lannister had glared at him as if he was offended that Robb had forgotten. “Brienne of Tarth,” he bit out. “Your mother’s bannerwoman.”

“You mean the one who helped her steal you out of my camp and release you?” Robb said, equally icy; he’d not forgotten that. “No, oddly enough, she’s not come back to us. I can’t imagine why.”

Lannister scowled. “And I imagine you’d take her if she came. She went looking for Arya.”

Robb stiffened, his hand clenching around the cup that he was using, which he hadn’t let go all night; it was one of his own, and only his own squire was filling it, out of a bottle of wine that he’d brought himself: Nymeria had lectured him for nearly two hours on how to keep his food and drink safe. “You knew where Arya had gone?” he said, murder in his heart.

Jaime didn’t notice, perhaps; he only snorted and said, “No, we hadn’t the least idea, not a single place to start; we’d scoured the entire city and miles around. But that’s not the sort of thing that stops Brienne. After she found out we only had Sansa, she waited until we’d sent her to you, and then sailed off into the sunrise on her valiant quest.”

He sounded sour about it, as though it annoyed him to see anyone else behaving with anything like honor, as though that annoyance mattered to him more than what had happened to Arya, more than what had happened to Robb’s family. There he sat still golden and proud and beautiful as ever, the false portrait of a perfect knight, with his murderous bastard tucked safe between two Kingsguard and pouting under his stolen crown; his brother one table over; his father back in Kings Landing ruling the rest of the realm and his whore of a sister in Highgarden, the wife of Loras Tyrell; his two other children well and whole. Not one of them had suffered any harm worse than a well-healed scar, and meanwhile Father’s head had gone rolling to cover their lies, with Arya’s blood to wash them clean; for she was surely dead, in one of the dreadful ways that a helpless little girl alone in the world could die.

Robb had promised Talisa that he wouldn’t be the one to break the accords and start the war, but oh, he wanted to put his teeth in them and tear them apart. He was back in his tent afterwards looking over his maps and daydreaming hungrily, when Grey Wind pricked up his ears and they heard someone coming to the back of the tent. Robb had a moment of wondering what idiot the Lannisters had found to try and murder him; he was about to summon his guards, but then Grey Wind had the scent and instead Robb only stood and stared as a little knife came through the back of the tent and a woman’s hand slit it open just wide enough so she could duck inside without coming to the front flaps.

She was heavily cloaked; as soon as she was inside, she turned to lower the hood, and it really was Queen Margaery. She gave him a warm, conspiratorial smile. “Please forgive me,” she said. “I’m sure you must be thinking this is completely mad.”

“At least a little,” Robb said bemusedly. “Your Grace, if the Lannisters are about to attack, and you want sanctuary—”

“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s very kind of you, but there won’t be any attack.” She made a little amused gesture of her head in the direction of the inn. “They’re all in there arguing about it right now. I’m sure they’ll go the rest of the night, but Loras is with them, and if necessary, he’ll threaten to withhold Highgarden’s men, and that’s half their force. But I don’t think he’ll have to. Lord Tyrion is too smart to go to war with you. He’s just going to let Joffrey and Ser Jaime talk themselves out first.

“Could you break open this seal, do you think?” she asked, bringing out a bottle from under her cloak, stoppered with a thick cork and sealed over with wax. He took it from her, still more bewildered, and twisted the stopper loose and gave it back to her. She took it over to his own table. “I do have to apologize for all of this fuss, and that insulting invitation,” she went on. “But I was sure you’d find some way to come if Joffrey sent it.”

“Are you saying…that you put Joffrey up to this?” Robb said, incredulously.

Margaery paused, in the act of unstoppering the bottle, and then she looked over at him with a very thin and mirthless smile, that said plainly what he already knew, that she had a great deal to bear in exchange for her crown. “It’s very easy to put ideas into Joffrey’s head,” she said. “They can even be stupid and senseless. As long as they hurt someone.”

She poured him a cup, and another for herself as well, and raised her cup to him and took a sip before she handed him his. Robb took it a little blankly. “Sansa’s told me that you were kind to her in her imprisonment,” he said, slowly, still trying to work out what she was after. “I’m grateful for it.”

“Dear Sansa,” Margaery said, smiling up at him more warmly as she seated herself gracefully on his cot with her cup, her lavish skirts pooling around her; her gown was dark blue, as if she’d deliberately dressed, this morning, to make herself easy to miss in the night. “It was the easiest thing in the world to be kind to her. Being cruel to her—only a monster could do that.”

“And a monster is who you’ve married,” Robb finished.

Margaery lowered her eyes in a little parody of modesty. “My husband is…a stern lord, your Grace,” she said, which was a new way to call a man a loathsome cunt. “I’m afraid he was sadly disappointed in the birth of our daughter, especially after we heard the news of the birth of your heir. So much so…” She raised her head. “…that he’s informed me that I have three more years in which to provide him with a son.”

“What is he going to do about it if you don’t?” Robb said, baffled, and then he stiffened. “But the Lannisters need your house.”

“He means to demand that Highgarden provide him with a different lady, a younger one, to fulfill our alliance. If my family and I cooperate…I’ll be allowed to retire to a sept.” She smiled the and if not at him, hard and bright.

“I’m sorry,” Robb said grimly, and was. “But what is it you want from me, that you had to arrange all this to get it?”

“Well, I had to be in the same place as you and Joffrey at the same time. A month or two of travel in between wouldn’t have done at all,” she said. 

Robb stared at her as he understood. “Your Grace,” he said, in rising wonder, “did you by any chance want me to help you cuckold your beloved husband?”

Margaery gave him a winsome smile. “If you wouldn’t find it too much trouble.”

It occurred to Robb that the bag that Yara had left with Talisa was going to be helpful, sorting out when it was worth it; he could think of even the very largest bulge and it still didn’t give him an instant’s hesitation. “It would be my pleasure,” he said. He tossed back the cup of good southern wine she’d given him, and bent over to heave his mail shirt straight off onto the floor; he stood up out of it already unbuckling the belt of his trousers.

“I’m afraid I can’t take off this gown,” Margaery said, putting down her own cup and swinging her legs over and lying back against the pillows, her eyes gone smoky and pleased as she watched him. “We’d never get me back in it again.”

“Oh, we’ll manage around it,” Robb said, as he shed the last of his clothes, and as he came to her, he threw the billowing silky heap of skirts and petticoats up around her waist and lay down with it frothing over his head and shoulders as he bent to put his mouth between her naked thighs: he was certain the poor woman hadn’t had any fun in her marriage bed at all, and he was determined to give a very good account of himself.

“Oh,” Margaery said, her voice going low and urgent, and “oh,” as he moved his tongue and fingers on her; soon she was gasping and shivering under him, until she said suddenly, “Oh. Robb, you need to give me something to bite on.” He lifted away wet and panting and got her a scrap of leather before he dived back down on her, and she bit down on it and covered her mouth with her hands and muffled the cries she made wildly as she clenched and jerked beneath him, and in triumph he pulled himself up and went into her, a smooth easy stroke when she was so wet and open, still clenching around his cock. He got his fingers back on her and kept her riding on the climax while he fucked her, easing a little and then bringing her back up, until she was moaning wordlessly into her hands and even a few tears were trickling from her eyes as he finally spent deep within her, pleasure and vicious satisfaction glowing through him together, oh fuck: it was even better than pissing on Bolton had been.

He was careful not to get stains on the gown as he slid out of her. He got a cloth to wipe himself off, and then he put his head between her thighs and licked her gently a little more, tasting himself on her. He was going to be able to smell it all day tomorrow in the stands, sitting next to her with Joffrey sulky on her other side. Margaery was lying limp with her eyes shut and a glowing smile on her face; she put her fingers in his hair and stroked over his scalp pleasantly, and when he finally stopped and stretched out beside her, she turned her head and beamed at him. “Oh my,” she said, still breathy and low, a delicious well-fucked sound. “I begin to understand all those stories.”

He grinned down at her in pure smugness, and she laughed up at him and pulled his head down to kiss him a few times. “I’ll have to go back,” she said. “But there’s to be a hunt tomorrow, after the morning melee. Joffrey will be going.”

“Mm,” Robb said. “I’m afraid I’ll not be offering my own back to Lannister crossbows in the woods. But perhaps we can find a way to fill the hours while they’re gone?”

They managed to fuck another nine times before the end of the festival; once in a little crawl space that Grey Wind had turned up right beneath the stands, in a fervent rush. They’d both excused themselves just for moments; over their heads Joffrey was busy shouting gleeful insults at the fighters in the fools’ melee, and Robb kept his mouth sealed over Margaery’s as he held her up with her legs around his waist and fucked her as fast as he could, both of them wild with eagerness and ready to come just from the satisfaction of doing it, and afterwards Robb went up and sat down in his chair again, loose-limbed and relaxed, and smirked at Joffrey and his two anxious Kingsguard. Margaery came back herself a few minutes later, her hair smoothed and a light wrap put on over her gown, for warmth she said; and Robb turned back to the field getting hard again under his mail, breathing in the smell of them together.

He had her for the last time in Joffrey’s own bed; the royal baggage train was already almost packed outside, but all the servants were busy below serving a final meal. She was wearing a lighter traveling gown that came open more easily in the front; he opened it up and kissed and sucked on her breasts luxuriously, and she had him come sit astride her chest and put his cock between them, and she lifted her head to lick at the head of it as he thrust gently, until he’d grown fully hard, and then she turned over on the bed and he gripped her hips and fucked her deeply while she touched and stroked herself to climax on him, and he pushed as deep as he could and pulled her hips up and back tight against him as he spent, pulsing, and then he came out and panted a little while and then made himself hard again with his hand and took her a second time. His cock was too sensitive and she wasn’t even bothering to bring herself again, but they both lusted for the same thing; she said, “Yes, Robb, yes, again,” and they both groaned with satisfaction when he spent once more.

He fell on the bed next to her laughing a little and she propped herself on her elbows with her eyes crinkled in delight and kissed him. “Thank you, your Grace,” she said, twinkling, and he grinned back at her and said, “You’re most welcome, your Grace,” and Margaery smiled at him slow and sultry, and stroked his cock with her fingers once more, and it turned out he could manage a third time, just thinking about it, revenging himself on the Lannisters in the best way he possibly could, the same way they’d stolen the crown, thinking themselves so clever.

They dressed again, and after Grey Wind made sure there was no one close enough to see, Robb climbed back out of the window and swung over to the nearby gable and from there down to the ground. He went through the woods and found his guards waiting where he’d left them, and came around to the front of the inn just in time to meet Margaery coming out, tidy and elegant again, and to hand her into the royal carriage where Joffrey was waiting. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, your Grace,” he said, kissing her hand. “I’ll be sure to pass Sansa your good wishes.”

“And I will be glad to give hers to my grandmother, your Grace,” Margaery said, giving him a smile stiff with formal and polished charm, even as her fingers secretly squeezed on his. “I wish you a safe journey home.”

“And you as well,” Robb said, and shut the door and stepped back; the rest of the southron party was going, Jaime Lannister glaring at him as he rode away. Walder Frey was in his own carriage among his men with his thin hungry face scowling and full of hate, waiting to travel westward with them, to be given his own keep back.

It was a week’s journey, on guard at all times, and then two hours waiting at the keep while Yara’s men came out of it, carrying lockboxes full of silver out of Frey’s treasure room before his bulging and furious eyes; but he looked at Robb and didn’t dare protest, and when it was over, Robb turned to him and said softly, “You forced a promise from me the first time I was here, Lord Frey, when I was desperate to save my father and my sisters. I made it, and I broke it, and three times now you’ve tried to have your revenge on me. The debt’s been cleared. If you ever come at me again, in even the smallest way, then I’ll come back here one more time, and there won’t be a stone left of either of your towers when I have gone.”

The ironborn sailed them back to Torrhen’s Square. Robb gave each of the captains a sack of silver the size of their heads, and another box for Yara herself, and took the rest of his tourney prize back to Winterfell to fill their coffers afresh. “At this rate, we’ll have the glassgardens repaired before winter even comes,” Mother said, stroking his cheek with relief so great that he saw the worry she’d felt reflected in it. He looked in her face with a question, and she smiled a little tearfully and admitted, low, “I feared you would find it hard to come back without going to war, after seeing those foul wretches…” She shook her head fiercely.

“It was tempting, I admit,” he said. “But I…consoled myself,” and waved his hand over the lockboxes, enjoying an inner smirk; she frowned at him a little narrowly, but only said, “I am glad of it.” 

Unfortunately, Nymeria was less inclined to give him any rope to work with. After he’d seen the boys to bed, swaddled and kissed and safely tucked in under Old Nan’s watch, he’d barely got in the bedroom and was kissing Talisa eagerly, and Nymeria suddenly sang out from behind him, “So what was her name this time?”

He jerked and glared over his shoulder at her; she was leaning against the doorframe with a mean smirk, her arms folded over the top of her own growing belly. “Nymeria!” Talisa said.

“He hasn’t said no, has he?” Nymeria said coldly, and Talisa paused, caught a little in hesitation.

Robb clenched his jaw and growled at Nymeria, “You, get out,” and sent Grey Wind to jump and slam the door in her face, so she had to hop back to keep from having her nose smacked, and then he looked back at Talisa, who was looking at him with her eyes a little wounded, waiting. “You can’t breathe a word of it, not even to her,” he said, and her brow crinkled, and then he told her.

“Oh,” Talisa said, a little blankly, and sat down on the couch before the hearth. He sighed inwardly and went to pour himself a glass of whiskey, and a glass of wine for her, and sat down with her; she took the glass and drank it and halfway through it she straightened in her seat and said, suddenly, “You can’t go to war with them anymore, then.”

“No, I suppose not,” he said, a bit ruefully; that part of the affair hadn’t occurred to him—although as soon as Talisa said it, he was certain that the thought had occurred to Margaery, who had known better than to let the Lannisters go to war with him at thirty thousand to five, and who liked being the queen of the south enough to put up with Joffrey.

“Well,” Talisa said after another little while, “I did ask the Mother to spare us from war.”

He said, a bit hopefully, “Can I…make it up to you?” Talisa bit her lip and looked at him a little sidelong. “What?” he said warily.

“While you were away, Nymeria kept saying…” Talisa said, and he understood at once; she’d told Talisa that he’d be unfaithful, and Talisa had of course defended him… He winced. “She agreed she’d stop if I promised her that if you…” She trailed off.

“How long will I be sleeping on the floor?” he said, with a sigh.

“No, that’s not…” Talisa said, a bit stifled, and he groaned and let his head fall back against the couch in instant understanding. Of course that was what she’d made Talisa promise, because she’d known Talisa wouldn’t ever ask him for it herself in a thousand years. “It’s all right,” Talisa added. “You don’t have to.”

And of course he didn’t have to; and not just because he was the king, but because she loved him, and was far too kind to want him to do anything at all he didn’t want. But there was a difference between something he didn’t want and just being a squirming coward, and he knew very well what side this would be on. And—well, he had decided that it would be worth it.

“I’ve had my fun, I can pay my forfeit,” he said. “If you’d like it, and not just her,” and Talisa went just the sort of red and embarrassed to let him know that she did like the idea, even while she stifled tried to say that she didn’t want him to feel— He stopped her with a kiss, and she let him, and he kissed her some more, nuzzling at her and cupping her beautiful full milk-heavy breasts in his hands, her breath coming hard and eager, hesitation and unhappiness forgotten.

After he’d got her flushed and panting, he opened the door to the study, where Nymeria was sitting by the hearth with the next phallus up, oiling it like an eager squire tending a sword to get it ready for use. She’d even got Talisa a kind of harness for the thing. He glared at her as she came and handed it over to him. She smirked back. “Have fun, Stark,” she said insincerely, as she turned and left.

He took it and barred the door and took it over to the bed; Talisa was already there, in only her thin shift, bright-eyed and half abashed, and he climbed on and kissed his way up her ankles and her lovely long legs, nudging the shift up little by little, until he had his head between her thighs, and she was already wet, quivering beneath his mouth, and he was taut and embarrassed himself by his own rising excitement as he helped her put the harness on. 

She was tentative and very careful as she put it in him, but there wasn’t any great resistance: one good slow steady push brought it into him all the way to the hilt. He gasped out a few breaths, his mouth rounded, trying to get used to it. It was definitely bigger than the other one. It felt as big as a real cock might be, a small one maybe but still big enough that it felt much more like someone was really fucking him.

“Is…is it all right?” Talisa asked, her voice anxious, and yet also a little ragged and breathy with lust, and it made him shiver to hear it.

“Yes,” he panted out, and then she drew it out; she had more of the oil in a little vial, and she dripped it on the phallus before she pressed it back into him all over again, still steady but not nearly as slow as before, going all the way so his breath came exploding high out of his throat. “Oh, fuck,” he said, with a bit of a wheeze.

“Is it too—” Talisa said, stopping at once, but he put his hand backwards to her thigh and squeezed it to let her know that it wasn’t, and oh, he could feel on his thumb that she was dripping wet. He put his head down and let himself sink into the bed as she started to fuck him in earnest, every stroke and her own small gasps of pleasure filling him with heat and satisfaction: and oh, it had been worth it, it was worth it twice over and more, feeling that he’d not only taken his own pleasure but had brought it back to their den to let her share it with him, a feasting for them both.

Chapter Text

He’d only been gone a few months, going to the tourney and back, but that had been enough time for Talisa to finish recovering fully from childbirth; after he’d come home—and had made his adventure up to her—she was soon blooming with happiness and health, and it turned out that they were both very bad at restraining themselves. But Robb didn’t mean to yield to the impulse, no matter how much he needed a second heir; he didn’t want Talisa to have the risk and effort of bearing another child too soon. And he was overdue besides to make a royal progress: he needed to make his lords pay to support his court, and to both see them and show himself to them, a gentle reminder of the yoke and the reins.

“I’ll make a circuit of the south, to start,” Robb said. “I shouldn’t be gone longer than three months, if you can spare me.”

“You’re just tired of being woken up at night!” Talisa said in mock accusation, but when he caught her up in his arms and tumbled her over to bite her in revenge, she put her arms around him and they started kissing, and then they started moving against one another, and pushing their shifts out of the way, and he had to make a valiant effort of will to roll away before he went into her. It hadn’t been at all hard to hold back after the first birth, when Talisa had been so wretched and ill and sore, but now when she was eager and wet and sighing in disappointment herself— 

He turned back and slid down her body to use his mouth instead, and afterwards she did the same for him, but then she said regretfully, “I suppose you should. Old Nan did tell me not again until Brandon is weaned.” It didn’t seem as though it ought to be so hard; he loved making love with her in any way they tried it. But it was having to eat only one kind of cake while the second was there on a platter just asking to be devoured.

He left Rickon as Lord of Winterfell and took Sansa with him. She’d reconciled with Talisa now, but she continued to openly despise Nymeria, a feeling grown entirely mutual, and in any case, he wanted her to see more of the young men of the North. He wasn’t worried anymore about one of his bannermen making a pawn of her; now she could have a man of her choosing and not someone she had to take, either for protection or for politics.

He also wanted her advice, and her own sharp wolf’s eyes at his side. She’d handled almost all of the business of the realm while he’d been away, this time, and at least as well as he’d have done himself, he felt. She had a gift for looking at matters from a different direction. Whenever she pointed out to him the root of some quarrel or offered him a suggestion that settled three problems at once, it seemed to him like the way he could see a battlefield, or a plan of campaign. He didn’t mean to tell her, because he wanted her happiness more, but he would have been selfishly glad for her to take a lesser bannerman, a younger son, and bring him back to Winterfell to live, where she could go on helping him, instead of leaving home again herself.

They went to Barrowton first, and he soon had fresh cause to be grateful for Sansa’s company. Lady Barbrey was wooden in her hosting, but she was an older woman, narrow and stiff, and Robb was ready to assume it only formal manners, and that the scanty table she kept was the best that she could do. By the end of the second day, though, Sansa came to his rooms in the evening and said, “Robb, that woman hates us.” She’d spoken to a few of the servants and learned that Lady Barbrey had never stopped resenting that her husband had died in Father’s service, during Robert’s Rebellion, and his bones had never been returned to her: she’d been a young widow at the time, married only a year.

“He was with Father at the Tower of Joy, wasn’t he?” Robb said. “Should I send someone to dig up his bones and bring them back?”

“The bones are an excuse,” Sansa said. “She was angry that Father came home and her husband didn’t. They say there was talk of her marrying Father, once, too,” she added. “Back when Uncle Brandon was still alive, and he was the Stark who was betrothed to Mother. I’m sure that only makes it worse. And now you’re king, and she thinks about the children she never had because her husband died saving Father’s life.”

He remembered as she spoke that only a token handful of men had come from Barrowton, to the war in the south, and their taxes had been scanty. He’d assumed that the doing of an elderly woman as well. “And Barrowton should matter to the North,” he said. “Ironborn traders should be coming here up the river, and they could be growing far more grain in the barrowlands than they are.”

“You mean they have grown far more grain than they’ve told you about,” Sansa said, dry, and he stiffened. “She’s not poor, Robb. She’s feeding us badly and she’s put us in cold and badly-kept rooms on purpose. The southern tower that’s shut up, I’m sure that’s where the real guest chambers are. All the hangings in the keep have been changed just lately, and the threadbare ones that are up are all thick with dust: they’ve been in attics. She barely picks at her food because she’s having her own meals separately.”

Robb sighed out. “But what’s there to be done about it?” he said. “Am I to be harsh with an unhappy old woman whose husband did die, saving Father’s life?”

“First, you need to stop thinking of her as a sad helpless old widow,” Sansa said, a little sharp. “She’s the ruling lady of Barrowton. If she were stupid or weak, one of her husband’s relatives or her own would have come in here and taken over. She’s not. She’s a powerful woman who’s offering outright insult to her liege-lord and king, and you can’t let her get away with it any more than you could let any of your other lords do it. All her servants must know that she’s doing it, and all the guests she’s invited from the town. It’ll turn into a joke that people whisper behind your back before we get back to Winterfell.”

He grimaced; he saw she was right, and he didn’t like it. “But she is also a helpless old widow before me,” he said. “I can’t be too harsh to her, or I’ll look like a monster. I don’t want it to be a story people whisper of my cruelty behind my back, either.”

“You’re right,” Sansa said thoughtfully. “You can’t be cruel to her, so you have to be kind, instead. Tomorrow, at dinner, in front of her household and the other guests, you’ll tell her that you’re sorry how hard it’s been for her managing the keep and the lands, a woman alone. You know she’s done her best. But Barrowton used to feed half the North, back in Grandfather’s day, and give ten thousand men to the army—”

“Did it?” Robb said, dubiously.

“No, of course not,” Sansa said. “It has to be more and not less than what she actually can do. It’s not enough to just make her fix things, not after she’s been deliberately insulting. So you have to set the bar too high for her to reach. What is she going to say? That really they can only send twenty thousand measures of grain and five thousand men, when she’s been sending you scraps?”

“All right,” he said, beginning to get the idea: it was like a campaign. “And then?”

“And then you’ll tell her that you’ll be on progress for several months. You’ll be visiting many castles and seeing the finest men of the North. And you’ll keep an eye out for a new husband for her, a man who’ll take her name and be heir to House Dustin, and who’ll be ready to take on the hard work of restoring the barrowlands,” Sansa said. “And when you’re back in Winterfell, she can come to court and meet some of the candidates and choose a man from among them. Or she can let you choose for her.”

“You want me to force her into marriage?” Robb said, staring at her in dismay.

“No, I want you to force her to ask you not to,” Sansa said pointedly. “She and her people have to realize that you know what she’s doing, and you’re not going to stand for it, and if she doesn’t want you to take harsher measures, she’s going to have to ask your pardon, and promise to make it up, and then pay back with interest some of the money she’s kept back all these years. And meanwhile,” she added, “you’ll also tell her that I’m not used to campaigning like you are, and I’m finding my rooms uncomfortable, so her castellan will help me choose new chambers. If he doesn’t take me into the southern tower then, we’ll have to take things further. But unless she’s stupid, she’ll know to cut her losses.”

The pale, thin-lipped silence with which Lady Barbrey received his words, and the darting looks exchanged among the other guests from Barrowton along the table, were enough to tell him that Sansa had been right about all of it. But he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the woman after all; her eyes were lowered and her hands were clenched white-knuckled around each other, and when he’d finished, he paused and then added, “I also want you to know, my lady—we’ve an envoy from Dorne, staying at Winterfell now, a niece of Prince Doran. I mean to ask him to send us the bones of the companions who rode with my father to the Tower of Joy, whom he buried there.” Her head came up to stare at him. “My own father died far from home,” Robb said quietly. “I know what it meant to my mother, to have his bones returned to her, and laid to rest with his fathers in the crypt at Winterfell. I hope it will give you some peace as well, to see your husband brought home to his.”

She dropped her gaze from his again and said very stiffly, “I thank you, your Grace,” and that night—in their new chambers, far more comfortable, with a warm sitting room between them—Sansa said to him, “You were right to do that. Even if it was just an excuse, it’s an excuse she’s had and spoken of for a long time. It’s good to take it away from her.”

“I was trying to be kind,” he said, a little plaintive.

Sansa looked down at the embroidery in her hands; she still never liked to have them idle, when she was sitting. Softly she said, “Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to be. I spent so long trying to learn how not to be stupid, instead. And it was hard, because I was so stupid,” she added, trying to be wry, but there was a faint tremor in her voice. 

He reached out and took her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I should never have left you in their hands. I should have thrown the Kingslayer at them and demanded you back—”

She shook her head. “How could you? As long as you had him, Tywin couldn’t attack you, couldn’t have you murdered. He was worth as much as an army. If it wasn’t that the Karstarks were going to kill him anyway, not even Mother would have done it. And it was stupid of her even so. She should have hidden him instead.”

“Then I should have found another way,” Robb said. “I was stupid myself, over and over. Wasting time taking keeps in the Westerlands, thinking I was being a great warrior…”

“We were young,” Sansa said, squeezing his hand.

A sudden helpless snort of laughter came up out of him. “We are young. I’m not of age for another month. And you’re only just seventeen.” Sansa stared at him, and then they were both laughing, almost to tears, and they sat down on the floor by the hearth together. He held her against his side, and she put her head on his shoulder, and they sat looking into the fire until it had burned down to embers.

#

They had a much warmer welcome in White Harbor, where Lord Manderly threw a tourney of his own to celebrate the visit of the king, and packed his feasting hall afterwards with a joyful and riotous crowd. Robb was glad to see him again, and his sons, who’d been by his side through the whole war. Wylis and Wendel had arrived in Winterfell only four days too late to help him face Bolton and Cerwyn, having piled men pell-mell into boats and rowed furiously up the White Knife to try and join him in time. There were dozens of young knights fresh from the tourney field eager to display themselves for Sansa’s approval, and Robb was glad to see her stay out in the dancing almost as long as the music was playing, color and laughter back in her cheeks.

“I fear you’ll have another war to fight over that beauty if you don’t get her married soon, Your Grace,” Lord Manderly said, with a deep belly-laugh, pouring him another cup of wine, and Robb grinned back at him; his sons were already wed, so he knew it wasn’t meant as a tug on his sleeve.

When the feasting properly began, Manderly raised toasts to Prince Brandon’s birth, and to Queen Talisa’s health, and Robb was surprised, gladly surprised, at the full-throated cheer that answered; he’d never heard the like from any of his bannermen, and though it didn’t astonish him that Manderly would make an effort to be so courteous, the whole hall had seemed truly sincere.

He began to understand it the next day, when Manderly took him to his study to speak in private, of more practical matters, and in as sharp a contrast as Robb could have asked with Barrowton, told him that White Harbor would send four times their former tax payment, in the next year.

“I tell you, Stark, this trade with Volantis has been like lifeblood put into our veins,” Manderly said. “I’ve built six new docks in the last six months, and I still have ships lining up outside the harbor to wait their turns. When our ships go all the way to Volantis, they can stop in every great port of Essos on the way: all our traders, and many traders of the south to boot, now come here and buy and sell in our market, instead of crossing the Narrow Sea themselves. And many of the Volantene traders are finding all the goods of Westeros here in a single stop themselves.” He gave another of his deep guffaws. “I’ve never thought to make more money by not taking duties. But the harbor fees this month alone are more than we took in all the duties on every ship from Essos that came into this port in the last ten years. And men wanted to chaff you for taking a foreign wife. Your match will bring the North more money in a single year than any dowry you’d have got out of that weaselly skinflint Frey.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Robb said, trying to keep his voice steady; he could have kissed Manderly. He half wanted to run out of the room to go send Talisa a raven, only he wanted even more to be with her in person when he told her, and Mother, the news.

He asked Manderly to keep half the tax money back and build him ships with it instead. “Trading ships, but big enough to carry men and horses, if need be, as well.”

Manderly was thoughtful and frowning. “You want a fleet. Trouble with the south?”

“I hope not,” Robb said, and added ruefully, “And I’ll not be the one to start it,” because the news had reached the North already, that Queen Margaery was indeed with child. “But if trouble comes for us, I mean to be ready. I’ll be glad when I can land ten thousand men in any harbor along the coast of Westeros.”

Manderly jogged a finger in the air. “I’ve a thought to share with you,” he said, a gleam coming into his eye, and laid out a plan: he’d been thinking already to found a trading company like the famous ones in Braavos, and let any lord of the North who wished it buy shares, to build more ships for the trade.

“In peace, they’ll bring in money to all our houses, and if any one ship sinks, the cost’s not borne by any one house alone,” he explained. “And if there’s ever a war—they’ll answer to you. You don’t need to build them all yourself. I’ve goods coming in to White Harbor from every town and city of the North: the Volantenes are mad for seal meat and salted roe, our wool and furs are fetching a pretty penny in Braavos and Lorath as the weather turns, and Umber can’t send me coal and silver for my smiths quick enough before I’m turning it back into gold for him. There’s money flowing up the White Knife. Let your lords spend their coin to build the ships for you, and I’ll see to it that they’re all big enough to be of use for war.”

Robb was nodding before he was halfway through, and in an hour they’d written out the charter together, and he’d signed it. Manderly insisted on simply giving the crown a tenth share outright, and refused his coin to boot. “Wendel’s told me of the damage done to Winterfell,” he said firmly. “Your house has paid dear in more than one way, Stark, to free us from the southron yoke at last. I like my purse as fat as my belly,” and he patted the same with a laugh, “but I’m not so greedy that I’ll bite the hand that’s not only fed me but swung a sword in my name.”

Manderly didn’t only have good news, although the bad seemed little enough price to pay for how much of the other there was. It wasn’t only traders who were coming to White Harbor in droves; many of the ships were also taking money from passengers, desperate men and women fled from the chaos of Daenerys Targaryen’s conquests in Slavers’ Bay.

“I hear that they’re so overrun in Volantis, men can’t even sell themselves into slavery, for there are no takers,” Manderly said grimly. “The city guard there are putting new arrivals out into the wastes after a week, if they don’t get themselves out of the city. And the rest of the cities of Essos don’t want them either. So once they get on a ship bound north, they don’t get off it again until they land here, and now we’re soon to be overrun in turn.”

“Are any of them craftsmen, or have any skill to put to use?” Robb said.

“A few, aye,” Manderly said. “Some of the rest have money, enough of it to scrape by. Those aren’t the real trouble. But too many of them who’ve made it this far have spent all they had to get here, and too many of them don’t know anything but how to manage slaves. They’d be fine hands at that, you can be sure. Some of them even try to come the master over the smallfolk and get themselves knocked down in the street for it. But even the willing ones, every place there was for a pair of unskilled hands in the whole city has been filled, and for the rest—” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m having them fed once a day in the city sept, and they spend the rest of their time just sitting there in the street shivering and waiting for the next meal. When the deep snows come, they’ll freeze to death. And meanwhile, my own smallfolk are fed up with having them loitering in the streets and taking places that some of them want themselves, to say nothing of the ones who are turning to thievery. I’ve near had riots twice already. Soon—I’ll have to push some of them out of the city myself. It makes a man ill to think of it, and what I’m to say when I meet the Mother, I don’t know. But there’s no room for more.”

Robb nodded, frowning. “Let me think on this,” he said. “If nothing else, you’ll send some of them on to the rest of the North, and we’ll help you share the burden just as you’re offering to let us share the wealth. But I hope I can find some better use, even for weak or unskilled hands, than merely to sit in a street and wait to die.”

Manderly nodded. “And there’s one thing more,” he said, somberly. “I’m sorry to say that we took a deserter from the Night’s Watch in the harbor, two weeks ago.” Robb stiffened. “He was trying to get a ship to the south, with a woman and a baby in tow.”

“An oathbreaker twice over, then,” Robb said, low.

“I’d’ve passed sentence myself, if you weren’t coming so soon,” Manderly said. “But the man’s still protesting his innocence. And…he’s a Tarly. “

“Of the Reach?” Robb said.

“Aye,” Manderly said. “Randyll Tarly’s eldest son.”

“And he came to the Watch?” Robb said.

Manderly grimaced a little. “Tarly’s younger son has a name in the tourney field already, at the age of sixteen,” he said. “And this one…well, you’ll see.”

“Sent to the Watch,” Robb said, understanding. “And forced to take the oath unwilling.” Manderly spread his hands, but it was what he thought. “All right. I’ll hold court this afternoon, then, and you’ll bring him before me.”

“If you judge him guilty, I’m glad to handle the matter…” Manderly began, but Robb raised his hand to stop him.

“He who passes the sentence,” he said quietly, and Manderly bowed his head.

Robb asked Sansa to join him. “If we can find an excuse to let him go, I’d like to do it,” he said. “It’s a foul thing for Tarly to have done to his own son, and I find it hard to blame the man for not holding to an oath that was forced down his throat.”

“But the reason deserters from the Watch have to be executed is because lots of the men who are there don’t want to be,” Sansa said bluntly. “If the punishment weren’t death, they would all start running away. You can’t do that to the Lord Commander.” Robb nodded in grim resignation, trying to steel himself to the task.

When the young man was brought in, Robb could see at once what Manderly had meant. It wasn’t only that Tarly was heavyset, he was clumsy as well, with bad balance that would have made him impossible to train as a fighter: if Robb had been recruiting, he’d’ve gently set him aside at once. Worse still, Tarly was protesting in a panic even to the ordinary guardsmen who were only bringing him to the court, saying in a frightened voice, “Please, you have to listen to me. I’m not a deserter, I swear. Please ask Lord Manderly, please, I can explain, if he just gives me a chance—”

The men looked half-embarrassed even as they brought him up; Robb couldn’t blame them. It was hard to bear down on a man so nakedly pleading, like hearing a child’s voice let out into the air. And he’d most likely have to take this man’s head before the sun went down. That was plain enough as the guards also brought in the woman and child who’d been taken with him: a girl, really, thin and mousey and scared. Tarly looked at her across the room and called over to her at once loudly, “Gilly! Gilly, you’re all right?” She darted a frightened look at them at the head of the room, far less insensible to danger, and to him only gave a quick nodding, huddled over the child in her arms, a little boy not quite three years of age, who was trying to squirm loose and fussing.

“Quiet, you,” one of the guards hissed to Tarly, as they brought him forward. “Take a knee.”

“What?” Tarly said, sounding confused, and the guard muttered something under his breath and shoved him down in front of Robb; Tarly just barely managed not to fall on his face, and he looked up with such open bewilderment that in mercy Robb raised a hand to stop the guard from pushing his head back down.

“Samwell Tarly,” he said. “You stand accused of being an oathbreaker and a deserter from the Night’s Watch. I am the King in the North. If you have anything to say in your defense—” but he paused, because Tarly’s face had gone wide and slack with utter relief, as if the fear had just gone out of it, and he blurted out, even smiling, “You’re Jon’s brother!”

Robb stared at him. “You know Jon?” he said, taken aback too much to hold to formality. They’d heard nothing of Jon for a long time now: he’d gone beyond the Wall with Lord Mormont’s ill-fated Long Ranging, which had sounded like madness to Robb from the moment he’d heard of it, and according to the new Lord Commander, an Alliser Thorne, the stragglers who’d returned had said that Jon had disappeared from their force even before the rest of them had been attacked.

Tarly nodded, with a wavering smile. “Jon’s my friend,” he said, earnestly. “If it wasn’t for him, I’d never have made it through the training. He—he helped me,” and Robb felt a tightness in his throat; it was so plainly what Jon would have done, himself barely come to the Watch, and already putting his arm out to shelter a weaker boy. “Has he come back? If you asked him, he’d tell you, I’m no deserter—”

“When did you last see him?” Robb said.

“We were out with Lord Mormont, on a long ranging,” Tarly said. “Jon—he went on ahead of us with Qorin Halfhand, to try and scout the Wildling army. And then…” He swallowed, his shoulders hunching with a dreadful memory. “They didn’t make it back before the wights attacked us,” he said, very low and soft.

It was only a little bit more of the story they’d already heard, and that more sounded true to Robb: Jon would have volunteered, for so dangerous a task. Which only made it worse, to be hearing it from Tarly; it was too likely that the rest was also true, that Jon had been a friend to this man, and tried to help him, and now—

Robb drew a breath and said quietly, “Jon hasn’t returned, and Lord Mormont has been killed. Would Lord Commander Alliser speak for you, if I sent him a raven?”

The falling look in Tarly’s face was answer enough, even before he shook his head slowly. “But I’m not a deserter, truly,” he said, in desperation.

“You were caught trying to take ship for the south,” Robb said.

“I’m not running away!” Tarly said. “I need to get to the Citadel.”

“With a woman and child?” Lord Manderly said, dryly, raising an eyebrow.

Tarly darted his gaze back and forth to Gilly anxiously. “No, no, it’s not like that!” he said, and rambled out a long explanation of who the girl was, and the child, and how he’d got hold of them, that grew only more bewildering and dreadful as he went on and on, until he finished, “I didn’t mean to take her to the Citadel with me. I thought I’d get her here, to White Harbor, and then she and her boy would be safe. Gilly’s a smart girl, she’s a hard worker. I told her I’d help her get a place, before I left, but…we couldn’t get one for her at all. Not even in a tavern, or doing washing. That’s when I thought I’d take her with me, after all. My family’s house, it’s only a week’s ride from Oldtown. I was going to take her to my mother, and ask her to look after them, before I came back. But I was coming back, I swear I was!” he added. “I wouldn’t abandon my brothers. The bag I was carrying. You can look in it. It’s got these knives in it, a special kind of knife. One of them killed a White Walker. Our swords didn’t do any good, but he fell on the knife when I was holding it, and he just—burst. We have to know what the stone is, and where to get more. Your brother thought so too,” he added, urgently.

“I thought you said Jon was gone before the Walker came,” Sansa said, cool and quiet, from Robb’s side.

Tarly looked at her wide-eyed and then said, “Oh—not Jon. Your other brother. Bran,” and he jerked back a step as Robb stood up.

“What?” Robb said, sharply. “You’ve seen Bran?”

Tarly was looking up at him open-mouthed. “We—Gilly and me, we saw him together,” he said, gesturing to Gilly. “At the Nightfort—that’s where we crossed back through the Wall. I was trying to decide whether to go back to Castle Black first, or just try to get to the Citadel as quick as I could. I…I knew Ser Alliser wouldn’t believe me,” he blurted out in confession. “About the knife, or the Walker. And I was afraid of what he’d do with Gilly. When I told Bran…he said the knife was important. He said I should do whatever it took to get more of it.”

“Where was he going?” Robb demanded. “What was he doing?”

“He…I’m sorry, I know it sounds mad, but he said he had to go beyond the Wall, to find…a three-eyed raven. I warned him about the wights, and the Wildlings,” Sam added anxiously. “I told him it was dangerous. But he said he had to go anyway. I gave him some of the knives, for him and the big man with him, Hodor, I think, and a boy and a girl named Reed.”

Robb stared at him. Manderly gave a huff and shook his head and looked at him. “Your Grace, do you believe any of this?” Tarly looked desperately between them, his face hangdog and afraid.

“Yes,” Robb said, low. “I do. Because that’s what Osha and Maester Luwin already told us, about what Bran meant to do. Going beyond the Wall, the three-eyed raven; all of it. And if Tarly didn’t make that up, he didn’t make any of it up. Because if he meant to lie at all, he wouldn’t have said anything that sounded like such nonsense,” he finished dryly.

Tarly sagged with relief, bowing his head. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said, lifting his head and smiling.

Robb sat back down and looked at him steadily. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “I do believe you. You’ve told the truth, in every part that I know, and so I’ll trust that the rest is true as well. It’s what you’ve said, truthfully, that’s the matter.” He gestured to Gilly, and Tarly darted a look at her and back, anxious. “The oath of the Night’s Watch bars you from wife and children for a reason. I believe you that this woman isn’t your wife, and the child isn’t your child. But you’re treating her and the child as if they were.”

Tarly’s lip trembled, and he bowed his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I couldn’t just—let them die.”

“I understand,” Robb said. “And, I’m glad to say, I don’t think you’ve deserted your watch. But you’re skirting the edge of it, and the first time you had to truly choose between her need, or the need of the child, and doing your duty to the Watch, I don’t know that I believe you’d choose your duty. So you can’t keep her with you. Do you understand?” Tarly bowed his head, and then he nodded a very little. Robb looked at the girl. “Gilly’s your name. Is it true you’re willing to work, and just haven’t found a place?”

The girl stared at him with wide eyes and nodded. “Yes, m’lor…m’lord? Your Grace?” she corrected, when Sam hissed it at her in a whisper that could have been heard in the next room. “Yes. As long as I can keep my son,” she added, a pitiful kind of defiance, all she dared to ask of the world; she was holding the little boy close against her as if she truly did fear some hideous creature coming to wrench him from her arms, and Robb could hardly blame Tarly for not being able to abandon her. 

“All right,” Robb said. “Then you’ll come with us on the rest of the progress, and if we can’t find you a place sooner, you’ll have one in Winterfell. And I’ll ask you to send two of your men-at-arms with Master Tarly,” he added to Manderly, before he turned back to Sam. “They’ll see you to the Citadel, and if you’re told where to get more of this weapon you’ve found, they’ll help you go and get it, before they escort you back to Castle Black. I left Bran in charge of the North, so he had the right to give you that order, and you the right to obey it. I’ll let Ser Alliser know so, and that when you return, I expect him to make a trial of the weapons you bring back.”

Tarly did give Gilly a nakedly longing look that made plain enough that whether or not pity had moved him, he also would have been glad to break his vows, given half a chance, and very likely had done so along the way. Robb sighed inwardly, seeing it; he was sure that Father wouldn’t have pardoned the man. But he wasn’t going to swing a sword to put a man to death for lust, and to give Tarly credit, he only said to her earnestly, “You’ll be all right, Gilly. Don’t worry. Jon’s brother won’t let anything bad happen to you,” and when she gave him a small and anxious nod, he smiled back waveringly, and then took his eyes off her, and turned his attention to his sack from the guards who’d brought it, with relief great enough to make Robb believe in his dedication to that, as well.

He showed them one of the strange blades, made of an odd black stone that was beautiful and sharp, but chipped so easily that it hardly seemed worth using. “But we know the rangers used them, a long time ago,” Sam explained. “There was a whole big cache of them buried, with the symbol of the Night’s Watch.”

Robb kept one himself to take back to Maester Luwin, and left another with Manderly, to show to passing traders, and then he wrote a letter over his own signature for Tarly to carry with him, to say that he was come to the Citadel at the behest of the King in the North, and asking the maesters to give him aid.

#

The meeting left Robb disturbed afterwards. That night he stood by the fire turning the black stone blade over and over in his hands, staring at the reflections deep in the surface. It wasn’t the same as the black stone of the north tower, of Moat Cailin, far more brittle and glossy, and yet it felt similar to him: a reminder of knowledge lost and long forgotten, the secrets of the ancient kings.

“I still don’t understand what Bran was trying to do, or why,” he said finally, when Sansa asked him. “But I don’t think he was mad. And if he wasn’t mad, if it wasn’t just foolish for him to go beyond the Wall and risk his life when he could have gone to Last Hearth with Rickon, it was important.” He turned back from the fire. “When the war began, I only ever looked to the south for danger. I had to learn to look around me and see danger in the North itself—in the ironborn, in Bolton and my own lords. But I still haven’t looked for it beyond the Wall, and I think I must, because whatever’s there, whatever’s happening, it’s devoured Bran, and Jon, and Uncle Benjen; and Lord Commander Mormont and many men of the Watch.”

Sansa was silent, and then she said, “I don’t think you’re wrong, but going to the Wall and back will take you months, and you’ll be going towards danger. I know you don’t mean to rush, but you shouldn’t go until Talisa is with child again. That’s important too. Brandon is still very little, and if something happens to him, both Bert and Rheon would have too good a claim next to Rickon. Someone would try to use one or both of them, and they’re too young to resist it. Yara wasn’t wrong to worry.”

Robb nodded; he knew it was true. “I’ll wait that long, then,” he said. “And it’ll be just as well to take the time. For when I go—I’ll go in force.” He huffed a little. “A proper force, and not three hundred rangers, half of them boys fresh from training,” he added. “What madness came over Mormont, I don’t know. He couldn’t have done any good out in the wilds with so few men, and he’s gutted the Night’s Watch behind him. Lord Alliser’s told me that he has less than a thousand hale men left.”

He paused, and looked at Sansa, who’d already tilted her head, as much to say—perhaps there was a solution for their other problem to be found there. “Some of the Essene men could go to the Watch, if they’d endure the oath,” Robb said. “But that still leaves the women and children.”

“Didn’t Father once talk of raising new keeps and holdfasts in the Gift?” Sansa said.

“Aye,” Robb said. “To help support the Watch. They’d pay their tax to Castle Black, though they’d answer to Winterfell in times of war. But these refugees aren’t just from the south, they’re from the far south. They’ll no more survive a winter in the Gift on their own than would a naked baby. And it would be hard enough even for Northmen to raise new holdfasts that far north, on the edge of winter, without asking them to take on useless hands.”

He did go down into the city and spoke with some of the refugees. He saw the ones that Manderly had spoken of: as soon as he arrived and they knew who he was, a dozen healthy grown men pushed their way forward out of the crowd and eagerly demanded his attention for their plight, namely that no one was furnishing them with a palace to live in, feasts to eat, and slaves to attend their needs. They seemed to think that they had only to persuade him of their birth and honesty, and he would be overwhelmed with sympathy and whisk them away to some place where they would be given all these things, and they were ready to trample women and children to get the chance.

But after Robb had them hauled out of his way, he spoke with a group of sensible women who had done what they could to organize the others; they’d arranged with the septas to keep the smallest children and the babies warm inside a corner of the sept while letting all the mothers take a turn looking after them. He told them of the Night’s Watch, and the burden of the oath, and after an hour, they’d sorted out nearly forty men, hale and without kin, who were ready to take the black; he spoke with them some more himself, to be sure they’d understood, and then sent them up to the keep for Manderly to have them escorted to the Wall.

He took an equal number of the stronger-looking women, who were willing to go as servants to the holdfasts that his younger bannermen, former members of his guard, had started: those weren’t so far in the north, and he’d given them money to make a start with; Robb knew most of them would be glad for some more women, who were harder to lure to a new holdfast. By then another handful of men and women had come forward, skilled laborers: some miners, a couple of smiths and one stoneworker, three silk weavers, a midwife, and an older man named Gralicus who said he had been an army engineer. When Robb asked, Gralicus drew him a quick plan of a thing called a polybolos, which looked to him a little like a ballista, but the man said it could fire multiple bolts without needing to be wound again.

“Oh, you’re for Winterfell,” Robb said, and didn’t have any second thoughts even after the man gestured to his wife, three sons, two daughters, and their wives and husbands, all of them huddled together around his eleven grandchildren near the wall of the sept.

He managed to sort out places for a little more than a hundred people, all told, but he could see it was only a stopgap, and not much of one at that: there were another three hundred still gathered there already, and from what Manderly was saying, new ones trickled in on every ship.

“At least you’ve made some breathing room,” Sansa said that evening when he’d told her. “I’ll send ravens to all our bannermen, and ask them to send us a message each month with the places they have, and what sort of help they need most. We’ll keep a list at Winterfell. Lord Manderly will send people to us on the White Knife with the traders: they can each take at least a few people, who can be some help to them loading and unloading the boats. When they leave, he can let us know by raven how many are coming and what sort of skills they have, and the journey will give us time to work out what we’ll do with them. Maybe we can train some of them at Winterfell, or some of our bannermen can do it themselves. And we’ll send them out again to whoever needs them. In a few months, we should be able to work out how many people we can place each week. That will be a start. What?” she said.

Robb had been looking at her somewhere between grateful and bemused; he’d been trying to think of a way to manage it all day, and she’d just contrived it straight out of her head for the trouble of speaking it out loud, as far as he could see. “That’s brilliant,” he said, and she smiled back at him in surprised pleasure. “You’re better at this than I am.”

“You can’t be good at everything,” she said. “You need other people doing some of the work. That’s even more true when you’re actually leading our army. If you’re away on campaign, you can’t be thinking about any of these things. There were seven men on the Small Council, besides the Hand of the King, and the Large Council had twenty-one.”

“Well,” Robb said slowly, “we don’t need twenty-one, in the North, and I’m not sure we need seven, but perhaps I do need a Hand of the King.”

Sansa nodded. “It’s good to have a councillor who has that kind of power, if you can find a lord you’d trust with it, to make the right decisions.”

Robb grinned at her. “I think I already have.”

She blinked at him, and then stared. “Robb, I’m a girl. I’m a girl of seventeen,” she added, dryly.

“I was sixteen when they put the crown on my head,” Robb said. “We’ve had a hard schooling, and we’ve had to grow up quicker than we ought. I wish we hadn’t. But the work’s come to us, and it has to be done. And you’re the one I trust to help me do it. You’re the one that I’ve been trusting. Will you?” He put out his hand; Sansa looked at him with her eyes brilliant, and she smiled a little waveringly and took it.

Chapter Text

Brandon and Bert were at last asleep, after a great deal of rocking, in the larger basket, but in the smaller one beside it, the swaddling had not been folded tight enough, and little Elia was fussing and kicking her way out of it. Catelyn resignedly picked her up and carried her to the couch and wrapped her properly, and sat looking down at her as she quieted: she had Nymeria’s dark skin, but the cap of pale reddish gold hair was bidding fair to go to Sansa’s color, when she was a little older, and her eyes seemed likely to be blue, and everyone who glanced at her face said at once, “She looks just like the king.”

And what was the use in disapproving anymore? Four children by as many women, and Catelyn would hardly be surprised if Robb returned from his progress with whispers of another one at his heels. It was better that he’d found a way to console Talisa, however outrageous it might be, and at least any lingering rumors of her infidelity had been silenced by Nymeria’s child. Robb had been wise to take her sin to his account as well as his own. Sansa had been right, however distressing Catelyn found it: the court thought nothing of that whatsoever, except to be pleased by their king’s virility. She was dismayingly certain by now that Robb might have openly taken all four women to his bed at the same time, and his men would only raise another bawdy toast to him in the hall. She’d heard several already, when the men hadn’t known she was passing by to overhear.

So Catelyn didn’t put Elia back into her basket right away, but picked her up and held her in her arms and took her to the chair to rock a while. She could let herself be glad to have a little girl among them. She was still rocking when Talisa came into the solar, and paused on the threshold a moment before coming in to sit on the window seat across from her, with a smile. “We’ve had a raven from Castle Hornwood,” she said softly. “The progress left there three days ago. Robb and Sansa should be back in a week.”

“It will be good to have them home,” Catelyn said, also keeping her voice low. “Did they get the news?”

“The raven didn’t say,” Talisa said, reaching out to shift aside a little fold of blanket that was bent over Elia’s cheek. “It’s nice to have a girl,” she added, the same thought, with a wistful note but not a bitter one, Catelyn was glad to hear: Brandon had eased the worst of that sorrow gently into the past.

The progress returned in six days, having ridden hard, and Robb hadn’t heard the news: he came bemused straight from the courtyard and up to the solar to hold Elia, and even Sansa, who had taken even more strongly against Nymeria than Catelyn had herself, at once said, “She looks just like you.”

Still staring down at her, Robb gave a spurt of laughter and said, “Does she? Nymeria must be so annoyed.”

“Robb!” Talisa said, but he looked at her with a raised brow, and she yielded before it and folded her lips and hands, lowering her eyes and trying not to be amused.

“Babies always look like their fathers,” Nymeria said peevishly, that evening. “She’ll grow out of it.”

Talisa put her arm around Nymeria’s waist where they sat together on a couch and put her head on her shoulder and said softly, “She’s beautiful,” and Nymeria lost some of her irritation. They were all together in the great sitting room of the north tower, where they had begun to gather after dinner because it had enough room for them all, and with three hearths and the hot water pipes running not only through the floor but the walls, once the sun went down it was warmer than any of the rooms in the western tower. “A room made for winter,” Maester Luwin had called it, and it did seem so.

Catelyn sat beside him near the center hearth, the most cozy place in the room, with the baskets by the fire: empty for the moment, because all the children had been claimed; Elia was being fed by her wet-nurse, and Robb was playing on the thick rug with Brandon and Bert, rolling them onto their bellies to make them kick and wriggle to right themselves, grinning down at their wide wet smiles each time when they managed it. Catelyn had a momentary pang, watching it: Ned had done the same to the children, when they’d been little. “I can’t understand why they hate to be on their bellies so,” he’d said, laughing over it—Catelyn had known they hated it because Old Nan always put them down on their backs to sleep, a passionate ongoing battle she’d waged against Septa Mordane, who’d said to put them on their bellies—and Robb had learned to do it to Bran and Rickon.

He’d learned to think of himself as a big brother even before Arya had been born, and he’d taken the duty seriously; Catelyn had been able to trust him with the little ones by the time he was seven, and by twelve he’d been managing all the others as often as she or Ned. For good or ill. “My pack leader,” Ned had called him, and tousled his head, when he’d caught the lot of them truly red-handed in the hayloft of one of the old shut-up stables, eating an entire tray of sweetberry tarts. They’d stolen them from the kitchens through a daring escapade where Robb had set Arya and Bran and Rickon to snatch the prizes, while he and Jon pleaded with the cooks for cakes to distract them, and Sansa had been posted outside to mislead the pursuit by saying she’d seen them going towards the godswood instead. Catelyn couldn’t help but rejoice to see him now with his own children, and it was hard to truly mind that there were more of them than there ought to have been.

“And they need you,” she said the next day, when Robb told her of his plans to go to the Wall. “Send another. You cannot risk yourself for so little reason.”

“It’s not a little reason,” Robb said, quiet but firm. “Whatever’s the matter there, it’s something that not even three hundred rangers of the Watch could manage. That means it’s going to take an army. And I can’t afford to throw away an army, so I can’t send another man. There’s too much chance that he’ll lose, when I could have won. And if I can’t win, if whatever’s on the other side is so terrible that I can’t even manage a successful retreat, that force is going to make it through Castle Black, and I’d just die fighting it on the fields of the North instead a few years from now. I’d rather find out what it is now when there’s still a chance to use the Wall to hold it off.”

Sansa had at least persuaded him to wait until Talisa was again with child, and it would still be some months more before they began to try, but Robb began his preparations despite that. “I’ve always had to go to war in a rush,” he said. “This time I mean to do it properly.” He sent some of his bannermen marching ahead to keeps in the far north, and arranged for supply to go to the Wall by sea in advance. In letters exchanged with Lord Commander Alliser, Robb had him put that supply out beyond the Wall to wait for them in large caches buried in the snow along the line of march, because he didn’t want to burden Castle Black with a large mustering; Robb meant to have his force converge at the keep in separate companies and go directly through the Wall.

“Umber is building me two dozen sledges; they’ll come with us from Last Hearth, and we’ll load them with supply from the caches as we go,” Robb said, and added to her, “Those were Sansa’s idea,” with satisfaction.

Catelyn shook her head bemused. She’d always been so proud of Sansa’s careful and meticulous accomplishments, her grace and her sweetness; Catelyn had hated the Lannisters still more, if the infinite could be increased, because they’d stolen the tenderness from her little girl. But she’d still imagined Sansa’s future as a lady, a wife and mother someday. It had never occurred to her to imagine Sansa a councillor, much less one so gifted that Robb had formally named her his Hand of the King.

But now he’d put the business of the kingdom almost entirely in her hands, giving his own attention to the mustering of his army, and it was impossible for Catelyn not to see how well Sansa managed it all. She needed to ask many questions yet, of course, but she came to her and to Maester Luwin and Maester Wornos when she did. She’d set aside a large chamber in the north tower for an office, near Robb’s rooms and her own, and there were already twelve bookshelves in it now, with papers and books so tidily sorted that she could lay her hands on anything she wanted at once. She had gone through the household bannermen and chosen a few of their daughters with good penmanship; now they sat in the neighboring chamber writing letters for her and for Robb, so many and so quickly that they soon needed more ravens to carry them all.

All the money that Robb had taken from Cerwyn and Frey had been spent to buy supplies for the keep and grain for winter, but their coffers were swelling out again with money coming in from the Volantene trade, and Winterfell would soon be truly whole again. Indeed, the repairs would have been finished already, except that even as they rebuilt, they had also needed to open up more of the keep than had been used in centuries. The guard had grown, the younger sons of their bannermen clamoring for places, and the household as well; they’d needed more chambers and more storehouses and more stables. Sansa had early on persuaded Robb to not merely repair the glasshouses but enlarge them twice over, despite the great expense, which was now proven a wise decision: they would be very glad of the increase in their supply of fresh food this winter, with so many mouths to feed.

But even all the added work was growing light with more hands. They had taken in nearly three hundred of the Essenes now. Sansa had sent most of the hale and skilled of the refugees on to their bannermen and small holders, anywhere there had been a need, which meant that of those left at Winterfell, many were women with small children or the old, those who could do little work, but nearly all of them could at least carry a single pane of glass at a time to the workmen on the glasshouses, or sweep a floor.

To house them, they had opened two more of the halls that had long been shut up, in the older buildings towards the back of the keep, and Walda had seen them made into a gentle kind of barracks, one for men and one for women: the large rooms made warm throughout, and bedrolls and baskets laid on rushes on the heated floors, with several large hearths set aside for cooking the grain ration that was provided for them each day. Sansa had asked the Essenes to share out the duties of cooking and cleaning and looking after the children between them, and anyone who was not occupied came each day to a morning gathering in the old stables nearby, where the masters of the household would come and take as many of them as needed to work somewhere in the keep. Catelyn herself had been taking nearly a hundred hands each day, for all the little errands that were part of the work of rebuilding.

“But my love,” she said gently, going to sit with Sansa in her room one night after dinner, to brush and braid her hair, the way she had since she was a little girl, “do you not wish for your own family, or to keep your own home? Were there no men of the North who caught your eye, while you were away?”

Sansa was quiet under her hands and then said, “Joffrey caught my eye.”

“You were a very young girl,” Catelyn said slowly.

“Yes, I was, and I still should have known better,” Sansa said. “After what happened with Lady, I did know better. I just convinced myself I didn’t. I wanted him, so I had to believe he was worth wanting. So I don’t want to—want someone, anymore. Not like that. That feeling isn’t worth trusting, so I don’t want to have it. So when I marry,” she went on, before Catelyn could even begin to protest, “it’ll be someone who’s willing to live in Winterfell and be the husband of the Hand of the King. Because what I do want is to help Robb. He’s worth trusting.” She turned a little and looked at Catelyn with a smile. “And why would I want to keep my own house? I’m keeping the whole North now.”

Catelyn mastered her own rage and the deep urge to weep and to rend, and smiled back at her instead, and cupped her cheek with a hand. “That you are,” she said.

She returned to the task, in more silence, and then sighed and asked the other question, because it would be better to know. “And…were there any women who caught Robb’s eye?”

“Robb’s not like that,” Sansa said. “I know you’re embarrassed about all the children. But he’s not looking for lovers. They come looking for him. And if they don’t have an honest reason to do it, he doesn’t want them. There were all sorts of women trying, but most of them just wanted to be able to brag they’d fucked the king. He didn’t even look at any of them twice. The ones who were trying to get him to do something for them or their families, he just helped them, if they deserved it. And I’m sure she was unfaithful every night we were away,” she added, a note of sharp resentment coming into her voice, “and we’re all just meant to put up with it, and that harridan she’s forced on Robb.”

There was a seething palpable through the shoulders beneath Catelyn’s hands. “I’ve spoken with Robb about Nymeria,” Catelyn said, with a feeling of unease. “He told me that he’s happy, and to leave it be at that.”

“He’s making Talisa happy, so she won’t make him miserable,” Sansa said. “That’s not the same thing as wanting Nymeria here at all, much less in his bed more often than he is. Why would he want someone who spits on him every chance she gets? I could slap her, the way she talks about Elia. She’d like to pretend Robb hadn’t anything to do with her at all, and she and Talisa just made her appear.”

“It is still Robb’s choice to let her stay.”

“Because Talisa is selfish enough to force him to make that choice. Just like she’s been selfish all along,” Sansa said, cold and brutal in judgement. “She likes to act like a saint, but she didn’t care enough about her own family not to break their hearts, and she doesn’t care enough about ours, either. I’m not going to fight with her,” she added. “I stopped, for Robb’s sake. But we shouldn’t pretend that she’s a true member of our house. Robb has to; he made vows to her, and he’s never going to put her aside. But that’s all the more reason for us to see her clearly.”

Catelyn was disturbed by the harshness and wrath in the words, though she hardly knew what she feared; what would Sansa do? Only when she thought of that question, it suddenly took on a different quality in her mind. Before she might have asked it—not lightly, but meaning only that Sansa could do nothing to Talisa, except be rude to her, like a sullen girl. But the grown woman sitting before her, the woman who was the Hand of the King, who so smoothly was gathering up all the work of the realm into her hands—that was a woman who could do something. Who could do almost anything she chose, to someone she blamed for hurting her brother, who was one of the only people in the world she now would let herself love and trust.

So after a moment, Catelyn put down the brush and sat down beside her instead, on the padded bench, and asked quietly, “Do you blame me? That I could not forgive your father, for the same sin?” Sansa stiffened. Catelyn looked away: it was easier to speak to the wall, to the stones. “I tried,” she said. “Many times. I told myself it was once only, and he was away at war. Perhaps he was wounded, or drunk. We were newly wed. I made excuses for him, though he never made any for himself. I told myself that I had to let go of my anger and my jealousy. And I would make up my mind to do so. I would forgive him. I would be a mother to the poor innocent child. And then,” she went on, thinly, “I would come out of the sept, where I had been praying to the gods to lift the resentment from my spirit, and I would see Jon again.”

Catelyn had to be silent then for a long moment, pressing her lips together. It was not difficult to recall the feeling. It had lived in her like a wild beast, so many years; it lived there still, in the dark. “Even as a little child,” she said, “he looked as though he might have stepped straight out of every portrait, every tapestry, in this keep. A true Stark. He looked more like one than your father did. Men from the North who came to the keep would mistake him. ‘This must be the little lord,’ they would say, when they saw him. And when Robb was little, his hair was not much darker than yours. He took after me, after the Tully side, and I could not be happy to have him do so. I could not be simply happy in almost anything Robb did; if he did well in his lessons, if he showed kindness or courage or wit. Because every time I would think to myself, is this not enough? Is my good, brave, clever son not enough, that you must keep your bastard lurking like a shadow beside his life? And it was not enough. It was never enough, for that.”

“Robb loved Jon,” Sansa said, low.

“He did,” Catelyn said. “I kept them apart when they were small, but when you were born, for a few weeks they were cared for together, and afterwards, Robb never wanted to be parted from him. But I found that worse, not better. Jon had become my son’s brother. I could not be happy for that. I should have been. I wanted to be. I could not. My heart would not allow it.”

And even as she spoke, a new understanding was coming clear to her, which perhaps she’d already had, wordlessly; she turned back to Sansa. “And that is what Robb has mended, in his own marriage,” Catelyn said, sure of it even as she spoke the words aloud. “That is why he endures Nymeria. He does it to give Talisa the power to truly forgive him for what he can force upon her,” and she found tears standing in her eyes.

Robb had known of the hurt in her heart; she’d tried to conceal it from him, but that concealment had been as imperfect as her own will to forgive, and he’d understood from an early age that the brother he loved was also, for his mother, the living symbol of his father’s betrayal. And he had never let it make him hate Jon; whenever he’d had the chance, he’d shielded Jon from her own resentment. But now, when he’d given a like injury himself—he’d willingly shouldered on yet another burden, atop the many he already bore, to heal it in his own wife. It raised a bittersweet pang in her breast, to know that he’d seen her pain, and had felt—that it deserved mending.

“I do not blame you for disliking Nymeria,” she added, with a deep breath. “I do not even say that you are wrong to criticize Talisa for needing that gesture to forgive Robb. I can only say that it is…not always in our power, to command love and forgiveness from ourselves. And that I would rather see you honor your brother, and love him better, for having the generosity of spirit to care for Talisa’s heart, than to see you despise her for needing that care.”

Sansa was gazing straight ahead now, with her mouth a thin line, as if she found that a hard thing to do. Catelyn sighed and added gently, “Forgiveness can only be a choice. But I did not have one. Your father had the power to force his bastard child upon me, and he used that power. When Jon was seven, I even tried to arrange a fostering with another noble house, in the Vale,” she added, and Sansa turned her head to look at her, frowning in surprise. “It is not uncommon for a bastard child. Jon would have been well treated, well taught. He might have become a knight, and been matched to a noble-born girl, even an heiress. But your father refused. ‘His place is at Winterfell,’ he insisted, and would not even discuss the matter. I had no choice but to endure it.

“And because I did not have that choice, I could not choose to love Jon. No matter how much I wished to. And though I loved your father, with all my heart,” and Catelyn could not keep her voice from trembling, “I still could not choose to forgive him. And I fear that I will go to my grave still bearing the anger of it.”

She shut her eyes and drew a deep breath, trying to find calm. And then Sansa said slowly, in the way of someone trying to work out a riddle, “But he would never have done that.”

Catelyn looked over. Sansa was staring at her as though she’d been told some strange and implausible story, of which she was having to make sense. “Father would never do that,” Sansa said again. “Of course he wouldn’t do that.” Catelyn stared at her, taken aback. Sansa shook her head with sudden rising energy. “He would never have done any of it. Lie with some other woman, a month after you were married, and then force his bastard down your throat, knowing he was making you unhappy? When there was another choice?”

Catelyn stared after her as Sansa stood up and went to the large book she had on the desk in her room, turning pages in a sudden rush until she came to a map that unfolded out of the middle, a map of the entire continent, and she straightened, staring down at it, and said, “He didn’t do it.”

“What?” Catelyn said helplessly.

“He didn’t do it,” Sansa said, with a calm and dreadful certainty. “Father married you at Riverrun, and fathered Robb on your wedding night, and then he went to the battle of the Trident. So if he fathered Jon right after Robb, he must have done it in the Riverlands. But that’s not where Jon came from. After the fall of King’s Landing, Father went on to Dorne. He was at the Tower of Joy when Robb—and Jon—were born. And from there, Father sailed to White Harbor and brought Jon to Winterfell, a little baby. Jon was born in Dorne. So he couldn’t have been Father’s at all.” Catelyn was frozen, her throat clenched in a terrible choking knot; she wanted to speak, to cry out, and not a sound would come to her lips, and then Sansa said, “But he was a Stark. He was Lyanna’s. Lyanna’s son by Rhaegar, and Father did it all to save him from Robert,” and Catelyn put her hands over her face and burst into sobs, strangled and forcing their way out of her, full of love and rage and anguish.

#

Robb couldn’t name how he felt after Sansa told him. In one way, it didn’t matter at all. Father was dead, and King Robert was dead, and Jon was likely dead himself. Even the throne he might have had a claim to was broken apart, and he’d been a bastard anyway. So it was only a story that had turned out not to mean anything. And yet it did matter, somehow. Mother could hardly stop weeping. Robb wasn’t sure if she was glad, to know that Father hadn’t betrayed her, or angry, to know that he’d lied.

Robb wasn’t angry himself; not exactly. He understood why Father had done it, in some practical sense. He’d had to lie, so he’d told the smallest one he could, which slandered no one’s honor but his own, and then he’d clung to it with all his strength and made it the truth as far as he could. “But it feels…like such a waste,” Robb said that night, sitting with Talisa holding his hand, trying to help him work through it all. “Making Mother and Jon both suffer, packing Jon off to the Watch—and now he’s dead, up there in the frozen wastes, and what use was it?”

But that wasn’t what troubled him, and later, lying beside Talisa and staring into the dark, Robb understood almost unwillingly: Father had never broken his vows, not once; not for lust, not for love, not for advantage. He’d never broken his word. The word of a Stark.

Robb got out of bed and went to Mother’s rooms through the dark and quiet corridors of the family wing; he tapped on the door quietly, not wanting to wake her if she slept, but she opened the door almost at once, in her own nightclothes. She looked up at him, wan and sorrowful and shamed, and then she reached up and he let her draw his head down on her shoulder, her hand cradling his head, and he put his arms around her. After a moment she drew him into the room, and he slept in her bed that night like a child again, his head pillowed on her shoulder, hungry for the comfort of his mother’s arms, a place he knew he belonged without question. He was the King in the North, but he wasn’t sure he was a true Stark, after all.

Chapter Text

“Has she told you, if something’s wrong?” Robb asked Nymeria, who frowning shook her head: Talisa had grown quiet, the last few weeks, and he’d begun to worry. There wasn’t any cause he could see. Brandon had begun to crawl, and he was bidding fair to hurl himself down the stairs or to go straight into a fireplace if he wasn’t watched, but so he was being watched, and Bert and Elia were both thriving as well, although Bert was outraged that he couldn’t yet go after Brandon and was thrusting himself onto his own face several times a day in an attempt to get moving.

“Will you tell me?” he asked Talisa gently, that night, pressing a little, and she sighed out, and then looked at him and said softly, “I think…I’m with child.”

He stared at her dismayed. “It was just the once, and we barely even—!” She was smiling at him a little ruefully, as much as to say, that had been enough; he stopped and grimaced. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to take our lesson for next time. Are you feeling poorly? Do you—” He hesitated, and then said, “If you think—you ought to—not—”

“No,” Talisa said. “No, I’m fine, truly. I don’t think there’s any cause to worry. It’s a little sooner than I would have chosen, but I’m young, and the last birth wasn’t hard.”

“So…” he said, and then understood the unhappy look in her eyes. He took her hands in his. “I wouldn’t go if it weren’t important.”

“I know,” she said. “If I didn’t think it was, I could argue with you more. I just don’t want you to go.”

He kissed her hands. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’m back,” he offered, and she smiled at him with an effort.

He was glad to feel that he was leaving the North in as good a state as he could hope for, at least until Brandon was grown; Sansa would keep a hand on the reins, and he’d written his will to name Mother as Regent, with Sansa continuing as Hand of the King and Rickon as Protector of the Realm. After Maester Luwin’s advice, he’d added that Brandon’s heirs would be Talisa’s second child, and afterwards Rickon, and after him Sansa, and to state plainly that none of his illegitimate children should be in line for the throne: it might do some good, at least. There was money, and plenty of grain for winter since the Barrowton levies had come in, and he was leaving a strong garrison behind. And the winter town was already swelling with people coming in from the countryside to spend the winter in a warmer place. There would be life and energy around the court, and the children to distract his family from worry as well.

It was a quick journey on the kingsroad, with his smaller band of men. The stretch of it that ran through the heart of the Wolfswood had a bad name among travelers, but it felt like home to him, in a way that helped to ease the lingering tangle of doubt and sorrow that he’d had to push away, to do the work that was his. Riding beneath the boughs with Grey Wind pacing the horses, seeing through his eyes in black and white much of the time, the world painted with a thousand hidden scents, he felt more than half a direwolf himself, all of the North moving in his blood and breath, leading his pack onward into winter.

Most of his original guard had gone by now to their own well-earned holdfasts; many of those men were riding north to meet him at the Wall with their own small companies of men-at-arms. But a handful of his original guard had refused the offer and chosen to stay by his side: Hal Mollin, Rusk Whitehall, Polgar Liddle. He had a private suspicion that they’d sworn a secret oath to pledge themselves to his service for life, like the Kingsguard, even though when he’d first been crowned he’d told his guard that he didn’t mean to put such chains on them. 

There were many new men among them as well, younger sons who’d grown up since he’d gone south, and Osha had joined them: she spoke a half-dozen of the Wildling tribal tongues, well enough to make herself understood, and knew more of the land beyond the Wall than any of them.

Shortly before they crossed the Last River, they turned off onto the hearthroad going northeast and arrived in Last Hearth six days later, the castle a great wooden building inside stone walls, glowing warm with welcome. Robb kissed Lady Esme, Umber’s wife, on both cheeks from his mother, and told her, “My lady, my mother wishes you to know that she lodges all the blame with her own son, who was so selfish as to keep all your menfolk by his side for so long; she sends you all her love and hopes you can forgive him.”

Lady Umber forgot to be formal and took his face in her hands, smiling up at him with her face crinkling like worn leather around her eyes. “Better late than never,” she said, firmly, and he felt as though he knew her at once, like meeting an aunt unexpectedly. She turned onward to greet the rest of them: “Mistress Osha,” she said, warmly, and Osha was smiling back, as demonstrative as Robb had ever seen her, and even let herself be embraced.

The weather was grown truly bitter by now, this far north, but the great hall was cozy, with roaring hearths and mugs of hot wine waiting, and heavy new tapestries upon the walls to keep in the heat: fruits of the silver mines and the trade with Volantis and the east. Robb paused smiling before the largest one, hanging behind the high seat in pride of place: the moot at Riverrun, with he himself standing and Umber in the center, out in front of him on a knee with sword upraised, and all around them other men kneeling amidst a forest of blades in silver-grey thread, and woven into the bottom edge of the hanging, in large letters: THE KING IN THE NORTH.

They had a merry night of it: Umber’s daughter Helma hosted, and sang as she kept the cups full; Smalljon had a new little boy of his own to show off, and the four sons he’d had before the war were all stretching out like climbing beans; the eldest, fourteen, would ride with them to the Wall with extra supply, and then come back, although Robb had a strong suspicion that his own idea was to slip out of Castle Black a day after they left and catch them up on the way.

“And I mean to come too,” the Greatjon himself declared unexpectedly over dinner, and wouldn’t be dissuaded either by his wife or his king.

“My lady, if you but give the word, I swear I’ll have him tied down until we’re gone,” Robb said to her, when they had a moment to themselves in the hall. “I know I’ve already stolen long years from you, but I’m a thief with a conscience; I’ve not come to take still more.” 

But Lady Umber sighed deeply and shook her head, looking at him with fondness and resignation twined. “My husband is a brave man, Stark. But there’s a thing he fears, and there it is,” and she nodded towards one of the great heavy chairs by the central fireplace. “For ten years, his father sat in that chair. He was a big man. A hale, strong man. For the first two, he still spoke from time to time, and ate if we gave him a bowl, and walked if someone took his arm and walked with him. Little by little, all ceased. We brought him from his bed each morning, and put him in it each night. We had to put him into nappies, like a baby. We fed and bathed him. One night, in the third year, when we were not watching him closely, he rose and went out into a snowstorm. We caught him just at the gates, about to go outside the walls. He never rose from the chair on his own again. And my lord will never say it,” she added softly, “but I know that for every moment of the next seven years, he felt himself a jailor who’d kept his own father in a prison, instead of letting him escape it with his last act of will.”

Robb felt a shudder of horror at the thought of it. He knew how strong Umber still was, even in his age, and he could imagine the long slow wasting that it would take to wear away all of that strength, before death could come. She sighed and said, “I won’t be that jailor for him. He’ll ride with you, and if the gods mean to spare him to me, whether to face that fate or no, they’ll manage it.” 

They went out again two days later, with teams of reindeer pulling the sledges; the hearthroad bent back to the northwest to rejoin the kingsroad, and the ground had been rolled flat over it, to make a good strong surface. Robb rode after them in a light sleigh Umber had provided, and the driver Besta looked back at him with a sly curving smile before they started and asked, “How fast do you want to go?”

He raised an eyebrow. “How fast can you go?” and her smile grew wider; she turned back and gave a loud whistle, and all ten of her reindeer converged on the sleigh. They got small knobs of sugar for their reward, and she swiftly hitched all of them up to the harness; Robb called Grey Wind into the sleigh as she started them going; first a little gentle trot, then gradually picking up speed.

The big sledges had already gone on ahead, but soon they were gaining, and then she gave another whistle and touched the lead reindeer with the whip, and they began to canter, faster and faster until they were flying over the snow, and Robb whooped with shameless delight as they shot past the long column of the sledges, the reindeer all stretching their legs into a full gallop and the sleigh seeming no burden to them at all. Grey Wind howled in approval.

Robb was laughing when Besta drew them back down to a more ordinary pace, and then let half the reindeer off the harness, to rest; they all kept jogging along together in company. Besta grinned back at him, her own cheeks bright with the wind. “They can’t go like that for long, but it’s nice to stretch your legs at the start of a long journey, I think.”

“It is indeed,” he said, grinning. “Is it hard, to drive them?”

“Not once you have the trick of it,” she said. “Do you want to learn?”

“Why not?” he said. “We’ve a long way to go.”

She had him stand behind her and put his hands over hers on the reins, to get the feel of it, with just five of the reindeer hitched up. “He’s in the lead, that one on the left,” she said, pointing, and started to show him how to turn a little from side to side. As they went, he started picking up a faint smell that quickly got stronger in his nostrils, a little burst more every time Besta put her hands forward on the reins, so he had to make an effort to reach ahead and keep hold over them—so that he was pressed up tight against her back, Robb realized. There was even a little tiny curving of her mouth when she did it, as if she was enjoying getting away with something; oh, she was doing it on purpose.

The next time she slid her hands ahead, he growled in her ear, “Just a minute, I’ve an idea for getting a better feel of it,” and he put his hand down and cupped her between her legs and pulled her hips snugly back against his, and she gave a little gasp and the sweet smell of arousal came even stronger. “How’s that?” he said, rubbing his hand back and forth a little, enjoying the pressure on his own cock.

“Oh, it’s…all right, I suppose,” she said, a little breathlessly, and wiggled herself against him.

“Just all right?” he said, in mock indignation, and she laughed and reached down and under her tunic and coat to unfasten her belt, and then she took his hand and pulled off the glove with her teeth and drew him in through the layers, until his cold fingers were touching her warm skin, and he pushed his hand in deeper and got a couple of fingers inside her wet heat and started stroking her, rubbing his thumb back and forth over her clit. She was panting hard, but not ever losing control of the reins even as her hips moved to meet him, and his cock was pleasurably hard between them. He kept working her until she went over, so wet his fingers were sliding fast and easy in and out of her, her cunt clenching around them.

That night when they camped, Besta laid out their bedrolls together, and squirmed in back to his front and pushed her trousers and hose down, and he got his cock out and put it in her from behind; she was already wet for him, and he fucked her vigorously, his fingers working on her from the front, and after she’d come again and was panting her way down she said, “I do think you might be getting the feel of it,” and they laughed together before they slept, warm all the way through.

The next day, she made a makeshift apron out of one of the heavy warm lap blankets, with a spare harness strap, and belted it around both their waists, and underneath it he got their layers out of the way while she drove. He wasn’t sure he was learning a great deal about reindeer driving, but he was certainly learning a great deal about how to fuck in something that was moving; even the bumps when he slipped out of her were good fun, because then he had to get himself back in, with Besta giggling and not helping at all, just rubbing herself back against him until he gripped her hips tight enough and managed to push back in between lurches of the sleigh.

They spent half the day at it, him trying to get in her, fucking her for just a little bit whenever he managed, her teasing laughter as he went slipping loose again; by the time they stopped for the midday meal, he was blazing hot with hunger, and she grinned at him and said, “It’s important to make sure the reindeer get fed properly when we stop,” and he helped her bring a big pot of hot mash away from the campfire to where she’d picketed her team, and after they fed the deer, they got into the comfortable nest of a seat inside the sleigh, and pulled the blankets over them and took off their trousers, and they both groaned as he finally slid all the way in, to the hilt, and started to fuck her wildly; she was already dripping wet, her cunt warm and slippery and yielding, and as she came, she wrapped a leg over his hip and pulled him in hard, and he stayed deep and spent in shuddering long pulses that went on for what felt like forever.

“So, learning to drive reindeer, eh, Stark?” Umber said blandly, while they were getting back underway. “They do go fast, don’t they?” and Robb grinned at him, suddenly glad and unrepentant through his whole body; he felt sparkling-bright as the crusted snow, the deep blue sky, his blood up and running hot, giving pleasure and getting it, making good use of himself.

He was grateful for the lessons, for they made the time and the countryside pass more quickly: it was twelve full days from Last Hearth to the Wall, passing through the barren cold lands of the Gift, untenanted and it seemed almost empty of all life. He’d spoken with Sansa about the Gift at length, and he’d known even before then the root of the problems here, that now he saw and felt so plainly. The Targaryen kings had paid little attention to the Wall and little respect to the Night’s Watch, and they’d demanded heavy taxes from the North that had left House Stark unable to provide all the support that the order had needed. And as the Watch had slowly dwindled, their protection over the region had fallen away. Wildling raiders had come in increasing numbers against the settlements, bands of men finding ways over the Wall or around it by sea, and little by little their depredations had driven away nearly all those who had ever managed to scrape a living out of this hard country. And as the numbers of settlements had dwindled, it had only hastened the deterioration of the Watch, for many recruits and almost all their money had come from the Gift.

Robb walked the boundary lines frowning when they camped at night in the ruined remains of deserted settlements, thinking again with frustration of the Essene refugees: he had empty land here and too many men there, and he felt vividly that there ought to be some way to make them of use to one another, but what could people from a land of seas and deserts make of this country, and how could they defend themselves against the Wildling raiders, used to the harshness, who would come against them?

He thanked Besta for the lessons at length the last night, buried deep under the pile of blankets in the sleigh. He squirmed back up out of the nest, panting, with the Wall a solid dark mass rearing up from the earth in the distance, blotting out the brilliant stars like a heavy line marking the end of the world; he wiped his face off and kissed her gasping mouth as he slid into her, and she laced her hands around the back of his head. “You’re a good student,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Come back in the spring sometime, and I’ll teach you how to herd musk ox,” and he was laughing as he came, their foreheads together.

#

The next day they reached the Wall by mid-morning, and the work began. The rest of his men were all on the march, only a few days away. Robb had a look over Castle Black and didn’t like anything he saw; it was a dismal half-ruin of a keep, full of dismal men, with little in the way of discipline or morale. Lord Commander Alliser was a sour-faced and angry man who made everything he said sound like a whine. He’d done everything Robb had asked, but he’d undertaken nothing else, taken no initiative at all, except to go on doing exactly what the Watch had been doing, for no better reason than they’d been doing it. A man utterly without imagination, except for bullying; he was grotesquely rude to many of his own men, and to Sam Tarly most of all, who had indeed come back from his excursion to the Citadel with three wagons loaded with dragonglass, which Lord Manderly had acquired for him from Volantis.

“Well done,” Robb said to Sam as he looked over the glossy haul in the armory; Sam beamed with surprised pleasure only to get any sort of approval at all. “I’ll want dragonglass arrows for my archers, and at least a thousand spears: write to Lord Manderly and ask him to get you more to replace what I’ll take, and set it to my account.”

Alliser, observing with folded arms, said sourly, “Do you really want to waste your time on blades that chip to look at them, and lugging them all over the far North, because Tarly’s made up some fairy-story about them killing a White Walker?”

Robb paused and said to Sam, whose face had fallen just as quick as it had lifted, “We’ll speak later. Excuse us, now,” and Sam nodded and went off, and Robb turned to Alliser. “Lord Alliser, when has that man lied to you?”

“What?” Alliser stared at him.

“When, to your certain knowledge, has Samwell Tarly told you a lie?” Robb said. “Because from my experience of him, he’s no liar; all he does is tell you the truth, and so much of it that by the time he’s got halfway, you wish he’d stop. If a truthful man tells you a White Walker fell on one of these blades and was destroyed, do you think that’s something the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch should sneer at?” 

Alliser’s face settled into deeper lines, pursing with resentment, but having begun, Robb was ready to keep going. “I don’t hold you solely responsible for what I’ve found here,” he said levelly. “The Watch has been neglected for far too long, without enough men or supply, and I’ve no words for the folly of Lord Commander Mormont’s ranging, which gutted what was left. But for a year now, I’ve been sending you more of both, and if you’ve done anything at all to improve the state of affairs, I don’t see it. You’ve had a hundred new Essene recruits; they’re all huddled around the hearths instead of drilling and working. You’ve no defense of any kind against attack from the south, not so much as guards posted, so even a small band of Wildling raiders could come round and cut your legs straight out from under you, if you were under assault from the north.

“Your keep is more drafty than the stables in Winterfell, and your bathhouse is shut up; the food on your tables is tasteless slop. Half your men are sniffling with colds, and I expect half of them always are, because they have no real shelter where they can warm themselves and take respite. I’ve not been here a day, and I’ve heard you giving insult to ten of them for no good reason. You’re their lord! When you call them wretched and incompetent, you insult yourself, not them. What sort of work are you expecting from men you treat this way? I understand you’re a knight by training. Would you keep a cavalry mount fed on dry straw and picketed out in the cold, hit it with a stick once in a while, and then try to ride it in a charge?”

Thorne remained only sullen and silent; but of course there was hardly any way he could have answered it. “Understand me,” Robb said, after a moment to let the reproof sink in, “I honor any man who’s taken the black, and you’ve stood forth to take charge of a bad situation. I hold it my duty to see the Night’s Watch restored, and I’d look to make a partner of you. But this won’t do. I’ll be gone at least a month. Get your keep sorted out. It’ll raise the morale of your men, and their strength. Post guards to the south, and apprentice each of the Essenes to a different man. Then give thought to what else you need. I’ll want Stonedoor and Rimegate manned again by the end of the year.” Alliser stiffened, staring at him. “When I say restored, I mean every castle on the Wall manned and ready for service. If that means adding auxiliaries, men who don’t take the oath but serve with the Watch for a time, that’s what we’ll do. If we need to raise new lords in the Gift, we’ll raise new lords in the Gift. Think it through. Talk with your men. When I return, we’ll speak at length, and sort out a plan before I go back south.”

He left Alliser to stew in it a while and went looking for Sam; he found him in the library of the keep with the frail ancient maester, sorting through archives. “Maester Aemon, this is Jon’s brother, the King in the North,” Tarly said, giving his titles in order of importance; Robb stifled a smile and sat down across from the maester.

“An honor to meet you, your Grace,” the old man said, gripping his hand with some strength still in his own. “Your brother was a good man.”

“Not was, don’t say was,” Sam protested urgently. “We don’t know Jon’s dead. There’s records of rangers being gone ten years sometimes, and still coming back.”

“There are far more, I fear, of rangers vanishing without a trace,” Maester Aemon said. “But very well. Let us say he is a good man. Lord Mormont had an eye to make him his successor. It is a pity to have lost him.”

“Aye, it is,” Robb said, low, feeling again all the waste of it, worse than ordinary grief alone. If Jon were here, he’d be just the man for the work. He’d have the warmth to make even cold and hungry men get up and follow where he led, and the courage and wit to try to mend an evil situation. Thorne should have been a ranger instead, out where his skill could do some good, and his temper no harm. “I hope to get some news of him out there, if I can, one way or another. I was hoping you might have some better maps for me,” he added to Sam. “Those I have of the lands beyond the Wall are little better than guesswork.”

As if he meant to prove what Robb had said of him to Alliser, Sam brought out thirty-six different maps in the next half-hour, laying new ones down before Robb had more than glanced at the last, talking volubly all the while about which parts of each map were considered the most reliable, when each portion had last been visited by one of the rangers, which Wildling tribe had last claimed which territory, with endless details of their quarrels and strife, until Robb finally reached out and caught his arm and said, “Sam!” and pointed him to a chair, before he could plunge back into the stacks for more. “Sit. Let me look at them. Then I’ll have questions.”

“Oh! All right,” Sam said, and put himself in the chair while Robb examined the maps; he quickly winnowed the pile down to five useful ones, which had some markings for terrain and distances, and with Sam’s help marked out the best parts of each, and then ruthlessly cut them apart with his belt knife and assembled them together, ignoring Sam’s horrified squawk of dismay.

“Are you a decent draftsman?” Robb asked, gesturing to the new whole. “Can you make me some clean copies by tomorrow?”

“Oh, yes, I…I can do that,” Sam said, still gazing stricken down at the maps.

“Good,” Robb said. “And then, I’ve a charge for you, while I’m gone.” That was consolation enough for Sam: his head came straight up again, wide-eyed with eagerness, although it didn’t last long. “I want you to help Lord Alliser.” Sam stared. “I’ve charged him with making plans to reopen Stonedoor and Rimegate. Take initiative. Gather information for him about those keeps and their state, prune it back,” Robb added, dryly, “and give it to him. Offer to help him with the accounts of Castle Black as well. I suspect he hasn’t much head for figuring, or he’d at least have spent some of what I’ve sent him.”

“Oh—I—oh,” Sam said, sinking despondent again.

“I know that he’s an ill-tempered man, and he’s given you offense,” Robb said. “For the sake of the Watch, I need you to put that aside. If he doesn’t use your help, that’ll be for me to answer, when I return. But if he only says cutting things, ignore them, and offer the help regardless. His opinion needn’t matter to you.”

Sam stared at him so shocked and doubtful that Robb sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s a man of narrow mind, and all he sees is that you’re no use with a blade. But that doesn’t matter. You survived the Long Ranging. You brought an abused woman and child out of the wilds, and saved them from a White Walker. You’ve been to the Citadel and brought back a weapon out of legends to serve our need. Men with ten times your skill in arms haven’t done half as much. And aye, you had luck to do it, but you were there to be lucky, and that means you had the courage to be trying. You’ve kept faith with your brothers, and you’ve kept the hardest oath in the Seven Kingdoms. So stand up,” he finished, sharply.

Sam was gawking at him as if he’d only just now realized he’d done any of it, and jumped a little, but after a blinking moment, he did stand up a bit, and made his shoulders straighter. “I—I will, your Grace,” he said, and swallowed then and said more firmly, with a sharp nod, “I’ll do it. I’ll help him. For the sake of my brothers and the Watch.”

#

Two days later, Robb’s army took shape. Glover and his two thousand men marched in early that morning along with Maege Mormont and her five hundred good longbowmen, coming from the west: they’d taken ship to Westwatch and marched along the wall. They bent the knee and Robb raised them both and kissed their cheeks. “Let your men have a rest, but stay ready; by the afternoon, we’ll be on the march again.”

An hour later, a thousand of the mountain clans arrived, hardy scouts on snowshoes; before they’d finished marching through the tunnel, more men were arriving from the east: two thousand pikemen from Manderly with his second son Wendel commanding; a thousand lancers from Hornwood; five hundred more archers from Lady Flint. By then most of the men of the Watch and Alliser himself had given up any thin pretense of work and were only watching the gathering of forces; Robb grinned at his incredulous face. “It’s a good magic trick, isn’t it?” he said, as Alliser stared at him and back at an army appearing out of the thin air.

Barrowton and the Rills came in together from the west around noon: Lady Barbrey had sent a thousand archers, with strong shortbows and packed-full quivers, and Lord Ryswell fifteen hundred more lancers under the command of his youngest son Dermont, sixteen years old, bright-eyed and eager: he’s young, and I confess a little excitable, but as Your Grace has proven, age alone is no measure of a man’s talents, and I think he’ll serve you well, Ryswell had written. The rest of the force was made of smaller companies, men arriving in groups of one or two hundred, some no more than thirty, flowing in steadily throughout the day.

After they’d all come through the Wall and eaten something, Robb gave the order to march, with any latecomers to spend the night at Castle Black and follow the next morning. He had the bulk of his force: seventeen thousand men gathered, in a day, and he wrote a raven to Winterfell to let them know he’d set out from the Wall, and to send them his love, before he left; he’d had one himself, to know that Talisa was doing well, and that Brandon and Bert each had two teeth.

He’d worked out the supply and given Sansa the numbers he needed, and she’d arranged to get it all to Castle Black, and put into the caches. He wasn’t surprised, the first time he reached one and opened it up, to find that she’d made sure they were all padded by at least a quarter more than he’d asked her for. He was surprised that he reached the cache by midmorning, when he’d expected to make it at noon, and then they reached the next day’s cache after less than an hour of marching in the morning. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Sansa had put extra caches in entirely, but they were where they were meant to be; he was only making very good time.

The scouts with their snowshoes were marching in the lead, in a narrow column only six men abreast, and the rest of the infantry behind them, tamping down the fresh powder under the feet of twelve thousand men, and on their heels, the big draft horses Umber had sent north months ago were hauling the heavy stone roller to smash the snow flat for the sledges and the cavalry. Robb had planned for ten miles a day and hoped for fifteen; he’d thought that was ambitious but something they could do, once they got settled into the order of march. Instead they were making twenty-five by the third day, and that night he said a little baffled to Glover, as they reviewed the order of march together, “Is it only not having to deal with the supply?”

He worked out the numbers the next day, trying as best he could to remember how many times there had been something gone wrong in the baggage train. Once or twice a day, somewhere along the way, unless there was a disaster of rain and mud; he wouldn’t have thought it would make such a difference, but when he laid it out, and supposed that the baggage train was delayed somewhere for twenty minutes, before they began to move again, and the men behind it had to stop and start again as well, which they wouldn’t do until they’d received fresh orders, and the ones behind them, the time began to mount up, until indeed he could see how he was getting an entire half-day’s march, just because he didn’t have a baggage train.

“Oh, if only anyone ever gives me another war,” he said aloud, and wrote Sansa a letter in cipher, to tell her what he’d worked out, and how important the supply caches were; they had ravens along for the Wall and for Winterfell, and this was worth spending one of them on, in case something happened to him. And then he reworked his plan of march, to skip one of every three caches; he could take less supply with him, and plan to race back to the last cache waiting for him if a quick retreat was called for.

They were five days out from what the Watch had thought was the most likely Wildling mustering point, a valley of the Milkwater in the middle of the range of the Frostfang Mountains. As they broke camp in the early morning, Grey Wind put up his ears and growled a little, and Robb sent him to prowl the perimeter of their camp. In a small thicket of bushes just to the north, he picked up a strong unfamiliar smell: a man, unwashed, who ate strange meat.

“We’re being scouted,” Robb said, with satisfaction; his greatest worry had been about going to the wrong place, and wasting time and supply in the vast distances of the far north. There was a wooded hill with a good vantage point over their line of march some two miles ahead; he sent ahead a group of his mountain clansmen, woods-wise and careful, to go and keep watch on the hill from hiding as they marched, hoping to catch one of the spies, and that evening they came back to camp with their prize: a lean and leathery Wildling man in ragged furs, who faced him unsmiling.

“Fought like seven weasels in a sack,” the chief clansman said, and spat on the ground, bloody; he and all three of his men showed the marks of it, and so did the scout himself.

“You needn’t fear ill use,” Robb told the man, who remained unmoved. “I’m Robb Stark, King in the North. Will you give me your name?” The man looked at him without speaking. Robb sighed. “Unless your commander’s an idiot, he didn’t send a spy who couldn’t speak our tongue,” he added. “So I know you can understand me. I’m looking to send an envoy to your king, Mance Rayder. If you’ll carry a message, I’m ready to let you go. Well? What about it?”

The Wildling scout looked over his shoulder, to the west, where the last rays of the sun had just gone slipping below the sharp jagged edges of the mountains, lining their edges in brilliant gold, and then he turned back and said, “Too late.”

“Too late for what?” Robb said.

“For all of us,” the scout said. “They’ll be on you in a moment,” and even as he spoke, the horn-call from the watch sounded: three blasts for White Walkers, the tradition of the Night’s Watch, which he’d told his men to keep, if they should sight any unnatural thing.

“Keep him secure, in the center,” Robb told the clansmen, who nodded and pulled the scout over near the sledges, and told Glover, “Douse the torches. Form square, and archers ready with dragonglass.”

As the shield wall went up around their encampment, he went to the center himself and mounted his horse; with the snow all around reflecting, there was a brightness still in the air, and once they’d put out the torches and banked the fires, he could clearly see the shadowed figures coming at them from the west, a slow shambling gait, odd and lurching. He drew his mount around towards the Wildling scout, who was tense and stiff in the hands of the clansmen. “Are they always this slow?” he asked.

The man looked up at him. “They speed up when they start fighting. Once they get the smell of blood, they’ll come quick enough.”

Robb nodded; they were downwind of the approach. Maege had come over. “Archers ready, your Grace.”

“We’ll be patient a while,” Robb said. “I want as many of them in range as we can get. If they start to move faster, give it three beats, then fire. Every man to choose his target: we don’t want to waste the arrowheads when we don’t know the size of the force. Do you?” he asked the Wildling, who shrugged and said, “Quarter as big as yours, about. Arrows won’t do for them.”

“These will, I hope,” Robb said, and turned back to watch the wights creeping closer, out of the trees. He rode along the inner line, Grey Wind at his heels, to speak a few words of encouragement, but they didn’t seem much needed. The men were steady, confident in the plan of battle he’d given them; confident in him. They had a right to be, he felt. He wasn’t much worried about the arrows himself, but if they didn’t work, the three smiths were busy heating up the coal fire in the metal chimney, and the quarter-size mangonel was ready: they’d hold the wights at the shield wall and set them alight with rags sopped in burning oil, thrown over the line or just lobbed over with shovels, and the pikemen would push them off.

Nearly four thousand of the wights had come out of the trees by the time the mangonel was ready; the front ranks were less than a hundred feet away. “All right,” Robb said. “Let’s see what they’re made of,” and Maege drew a deep breath and bellowed out, “Archers, nock! Choose your target! Further down the line, further back! Draw! Fire!”

The arrows went in a singing hail, arching over the shield wall and plunging down, and Robb was grinning in savage satisfaction even as the first ones hit, and it seemed drove the wights directly back into the earth where they belonged, each one collapsing straight down into little dark heaps upon the snow. Another volley went, and another; the archers were already improving at hitting their targets, he noted: they’d needed to get used to the dragonglass heads. They’d have to find some kind of stone that was nearly as heavy as dragonglass, and have new archers practice with it, to not waste any of the real thing on learning.

And then at their back, from out of the trees the ghostly blue-tinged apparition came: a gaunt, manlike figure, but too tall, with stringy white hair glowing in the rising moonlight, its terrible face full of hunger and rage, and its eyes burning with blue fire. “Gods, what a hideous thing,” Glover said, and Dermont Ryswell spurred over and said urgently, “Your Grace, I would sortie against it, with your permission.”

Robb reached out and took his shoulder. “That’s a brave request, but it’s not the way to go at them,” he said. “If you sortied out, those wights would converge upon your force and pull you down before you reached the Walker. I think it’s time we made a trial of our little toy, instead. Master Gralicus! Are you ready?”

“We begin upon your command, your Grace,” the Essene man said, bowing with a hand over his chest: he was a son of the army engineer who’d come to them from Yunkai, who had been learning his father’s trade.

“Then let’s see how the Walker likes a taste of burning coals,” Robb said, and the loader shoveled up a spadeful of them out of the chimney and carried them to the mangonel’s metal cup, where a smaller round iron cage sat waiting and open, and dumped them in glowing hot atop the bed of oil-sodden rags inside. The arm was already wound and the crew waiting; in a moment a man had slammed down the top of the little cage, and they launched it curving overhead as fast as they could go. The cage ignited into a blazing fireball even as it flew, flames erupting out of all the openings, and it smashed the White Walker down flat and set the creature ablaze, its limbs thrashing as it shrieked wildly.

“Again!” Robb said; they didn’t get as lucky the second time, the ball landing ten feet short, but even as they launched the third one and it struck a foot too far, the Walker was already dead, and they knew because the wights were toppling to the earth, all around. As they went down, someone shouted, “The King in the North!” and the men were all roaring, thrusting swords and spears into the air, a full-throated cheering: they hadn’t lost a single man.

The Wildling scout looked at him with a different face afterwards, a wary one. “Better not send this one, Stark,” Umber suggested. “He’ll tell them what we can do. We can hunt out another.”

“I want them to know what we can do,” Robb said. “Then I hope I won’t have to kill them to prove it.” The Wildling twitched a little. “Go to Mance Rayder, and tell him I’d hold parley with him, and know his intentions for the army he’s raised,” he told the man. “He may name the place, so long as there’s sight lines for half a mile in every direction, and we’ll come. If you return to tell me where we’re to meet, we’ll treat you as an envoy, not a spy. My scouts will go back with you to confirm the place, and then release you. Do you agree?”

The man eyed him sidelong another moment. “Aye,” he said, and that was all, but Robb gave the word to release him anyway.

Five days later, he rode out onto a broad snowfield on the banks of the Milkwater, the river frozen a solid white. The sight lines from the place of parley were wide open, stretching straight to the Wildling encampment not a mile away: a vast sprawling stretch of makeshift huts and tents and sleeping rolls, campfires in a hundred shapes and sizes dotting the ground all around, and men and women shaggy and bundled in furs moving around. “A hundred thousand, do you think?” Glover said grimly.

“Two hundred thousand at least,” Robb said. “It goes all the way to the base of that stream at the far end.” He turned as the Wildling party came walking towards them across the snow, their feet crunching, and he gave his squire his reins and dismounted to stand and speak with them.

“He won’t use your title,” Osha had told him, bluntly. “No fancy manners, no bowing. He’ll use your name.”

“And be glad if I make a fuss over it?” Robb said; she’d shrugged a little, aye. So when Rayder and his men came forward, he said, “Mance Rayder?” and waited for the nod. “I understand you don’t use titles. I’m Robb Stark. Your scout’s told you why we’re here, I trust. You’ve raised a great army in striking distance of the Wall. I’d know your intentions, and if you won’t tell me, I’ll have to assume the worst. Will you?”

Mance paused, and gave a small huff of breath, almost amused, looking him up and down. “Well, now,” he said. “You may not have much of a look of one another, but I’ll say this; when you open your mouths, you Starks are as alike as peas rattling in the same pod,” and Robb nearly came out of the line of his guards, wanted to; Hal Mollin moved to put a hand on his chest, a reminder that just barely held him.

“You’ve seen my brother,” Robb said. “Bran or Jon? Is he, are they—here?”

“I’ve seen them both,” Mance said. “And saw them on their way again.”

“Their way?” Robb said, his heart leaping. “Together? Jon was with Bran?”

Mance smiled a little. “He was with us. He’d made a good show of wanting to shift sides. I didn’t much believe it, but I was ready to let the show go on for a bit. And then your little brother turned up, and spoiled it for both of us.”

Bran had been brought in by Mance’s scouts, and it seemed that he’d persuaded Mance to believe in his quest—sincerely as far as Robb could tell—and to send him onward with Jon’s help to see it done.

“Don’t be so surprised,” Mance said. “Here in the north, we haven’t lost as much of the old ways as you southerners have. We have our own greenseers. And every last one of them who walked into my tent and tried to put the Sight on your brother had their eyes roll up inside their head and went down bleeding from the nose. The most powerful greenseer in a thousand years, they said, after we got them up and their brains stopped rolling.

“And no man’s seen the three-eyed raven in a long, long time. But we have stories of him. Some say he’s a pin set in the world, that keeps it from going too far off its course. Others say it’s his power that pulls the winter back. Without him, it would roll over the world, and never end. And your brother said…that he’s dying,” Mance finished softly.

“That’s why?” Robb said, a horror of understanding coming over him. “That’s what this has all been about? Bran’s trying to save this man?”

“Save him? No,” Mance said, with a little pitying shake of his head. “There’s no saving him. All men die, Robb Stark. Your brother’s trying to become him.”

Mance hadn’t sent them off on their own, either. “I confess, I might have kept them anyway,” he said. “But we didn’t know how much use they’d be. The Boltons had taken Winterfell, and you were too far south to do any good to us or your brothers,” too much truth there, which made Robb grimace. “It was Snow who persuaded me. He asked me how many men I thought I’d lose, taking Castle Black, to get through the Wall.” Mance made a shrugging gesture of hands and mouth. “Twenty thousand, I said. Fifty, he said. All right, I said. Better than all of us dying here. And then he said, but wasn’t it worth a chance, to get through for none at all.” Robb frowned at him. “He promised that if I sent some of my own men with them to see them to the three-eyed raven and back, then afterwards, he and Bran would be my hostages, and we’d trade them for passage.

“The boy agreed,” he added, “and claimed you’d be coming back to the North, soon. Said the Lannisters were on their way to make peace with you, because some dragon queen had taken a city in Essos.” Robb jerked and stared at him; Mance only shook his head. “Didn’t make much sense to me, but he swore it up and down, and said he was your heir, and you’d negotiate passage through the Wall for us, to have him back. Gave me his word.” He chuckled a little. “Word of a Stark, he said. I liked him,” he said, a wry smile, with honesty in it. “Nice boy. So I did it. I sent twenty men with them, to take them all the way north and bring them back. And that was four years ago, now, and not a single man of them has come back,” he finished, not ungently but final, pronouncing doom, and Robb drew a sharp breath and looked away, his eyes stinging.

Mance was quiet, a little while, before he spoke again. “I’ve given you bad news,” he said, “I’m sorry for that.”

“As am I,” Robb said, low. “But it’s not news I didn’t expect. And…I’ll take some comfort from it, that Jon was with him. Thank you,” he added. “Both for the news, and for what you did for them.”

“You’re welcome,” Mance said. “But to come back to your first question, Robb Stark, I have only one intention for this army, and that’s to keep me and my people alive. I waited for a while, after your brothers had gone. We heard not long after they’d gone that Bran had been telling the truth: you’d come back north. So it was worth the chance, if my men had brought your brothers back. You could make the men at Castle Black give way. But…” He shrugged. “Even a year ago, I’d already decided we couldn’t wait any longer. The nights are growing long. I was about to march on Castle Black after all. And then we heard the news. The King in the North was coming to the Wall, and he meant to come out to us himself.” There was an air of menace gathering in his words, the hint of a gentle threat.

“So that’s why you offered us a parley so close to your forces,” Robb said. “You thought you’d get yourself an even better hostage.”

“No offense, Stark,” Mance said. “You seem like a nice young man yourself. But I’m getting my people through that Wall. No matter what it takes.”

“I understand that,” Robb said. “It’s your duty to look after them, as it’s mine to look after the North.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mance said. “I don’t suppose you and all these fierce fellows would like to put down their arms and come quietly?”

“No,” Robb said. “Because I understand you, Mance Rayder, but you don’t understand me. You’re so busy not to acknowledge my title that you haven’t bothered to learn what it means, and how I have it. I’m the King in the North because I went to war when I was sixteen, and I’ve not had a year without war since, and I’ve won every battle that I’ve fought. And if there’s a battle here today, I’ll win this one too. Do you want me to tell you how?”

Mance had been listening to him with half a smile beginning on his face; as if he thought he listened to a braggart, trying to persuade him of nonsense. “How you’ll win a battle against two hundred thousand men with less than twenty? Aye, I think I’d like to hear that.”

“The numbers will only make it take a little longer,” Robb said. “If you come at us, the first thing that will happen is, my guard will close ranks around me.” He gestured to either side. “They’re all wearing good plate. You could beat on them for days with your steel and never make it through. And then, because you’ve been so kind as to ask me to parley here in sight of your encampment,” Robb went on, “I’ll look at Lord Glover, over here, the commander of my vanguard, and I’ll point right at that hill over there,” they all looked, following his pointing finger, “and he’ll know that I want to go take it, and he’ll sound the charge, and lead us there.”

He turned and held out his hand. “Ryswell, let me have your lance.” Dermont sent his horse forward and held it down to him, still collapsed. Robb took it and gave it a quick snap to make the tip come out, and locked it with a twist before he turned back and held it out upright for Mance to see. “Go on, try holding it,” he said, and Mance was looking at him with a frown gathering; he put out his hand and took hold of the lance, and Robb let him feel its full weight. “That’s twelve pounds of solid, castle-forged steel.” He took it back and held it hilt-first to Dermont before he turned back. “With a warhorse in full gallop and a trained lancer behind it, one of those can go through six men in good mail like a knife through butter. And your men don’t have mail at all. We’ll be on that hill in the time it takes for us to gallop half a mile, and we’ll take it as soon as we’ve got there, because you haven’t a single fortification, and only thirty men up there, if that many.

“And once we’re on that hill,” Robb went on, steadily, seeing the unwanted belief slowly creeping onto Mance’s face, and the men around him, “my shield wall goes up around us, and my three thousand archers, every one of whom is carrying a hundred good steel arrows, will start shooting. And they’ll just keep going until all of you are dead. Because that hill that you’ve not bothered to fortify or defend commands your entire encampment in bowshot range. You won’t even be able to run away. My archers can fire twelve arrows a minute. They’ll cut you down as you try to flee. And I can tell you all of this, because there’s nothing you can do to stop it. I called it a battle, but that’s not what this will be. It’ll just be a slaughter. Because what you have is a mob of two hundred thousand brave men. And what I have is an army.”

The Wildlings were all looking at the hill, now, and the distance between it and them; they were looking at Mance himself, and he was only looking at Robb, his face gone long and rigid with the understanding of defeat settled in. Robb paused and then added, “So it’s lucky for you that you have something even stronger.”

“And what’s that?” Mance said; his lips barely moved. 

“The word of a Stark,” Robb said, and Mance stared at him. “Bran made you a pledge, in return for your aid, and though he’s not come back, I must honor it. We’ll put up a pavilion here, you’ll call what advisors you want, and together we’ll negotiate a passage through the Wall, for you and your people, that you may live through the coming winter.”

He knew his own lords were going restive and gaping at his sides; he could feel it through his skin, and across from him the Wildlings looked no less astonished. “That negotiation will have limits,” he added. “The Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch is my ally, and he’s sworn to hold the Wall against incursions from beyond. He won’t be forsworn at my hand, and I won’t let you through to plunder and pillage at your will, because I wouldn’t have done that even to save Bran’s life, and he knew as much, when he made you that pledge. But my intention will be to find a way for all of you to live, in honor, if you’ll come and negotiate in good faith. Well?”

He put out his hand, offering, and Mance stared at it, and slowly reached out and took it with his own, as if he didn’t entirely believe it was real.

Robb had more trouble with his own lords, after, all of them talking almost over one another in dismay as soon as the Wildlings had retreated; he held up a hand, and said quietly, “Did any of you think he was lying, in what he told us about my brothers?” They all were silent. “This man had Bran and Jon utterly in his power, could have put them to any use he wished, and he chose to let them go, with aid they could not have hoped for, in exchange for their pledge. And I’m grateful that I won’t have to face the trial of having him slit their throats, if I refused to just let the Wildlings through to rampage, as I would have done. But there’s a great deal short of that which I would have given to have them back, and that’s what I’m honor-bound to give, if he’ll take it. Lord Umber,” he added, “you’ll be at my side for the negotiations. Last Hearth suffers more from Wildling incursions than any other house. And I’ll pledge to see you satisfied with the arrangements, if that will satisfy the rest of you,” and the others exchanged looks of doubt, but agreed.

The Greatjon himself had all but swelled up to twice his size over the whole matter, like an angry rooster ready to do battle, but that pledge restrained him a little. He waited until they’d gone inside the pavilion and were alone before he began to erupt, and then Robb gripped him hard by the arm and drew him to the mouth of the pavilion and said, “Look there. Tell me what you see.” Umber paused, and looked out at the encampment. “How many women? How many little children? How many of the living?” Umber was stiffening, and looking back at Robb in sudden bewilderment. “Which of them do you mean to leave to be devoured by those foul monsters we fought the other night? For my part, I’ll not leave a single one. But if that’s what I say, Mance Rayder will think I’m a soft southerner, and then he’ll dig in his heels and press his luck. If I say I’ll do it because I’m a stiff-necked, honor-bound Stark, he’ll be much more wary, because he doesn’t have my living brothers, to put a knife to their throats, and he won’t trust me not to balk.

“Besides,” Robb said, clapping Umber on the shoulder and grinning up at him. “I want to let them through.”

“You—what?” Umber said, his voice rising almost plaintive.

“I want every last one of them,” Robb said. “Umber, we’ve money now. And grain from Essos is going cheap, because there are no buyers in Slavers Bay. We’re going to take all these strong, hardy people, who are used to living in lands far more cruel than anywhere south of the Wall, and we’ll feed them, and give them timber and stone, and instead of raiding us twenty times a year, they’ll use that strength to build us a thousand holdfasts in the Gift. They’ll house every last refugee who comes in from Essos, and by next summer, I expect they’ll be paying enough in tax that the Night’s Watch will never want for money again. And if the Lannisters ever do come to war against the North, even after I’m gone,” he added, savagely, “we’ll have them outnumbered. Just make sure you shout at me a great deal, while we’re negotiating, and howl that I’m betraying all the North by agreeing to give Mance so much as a pebble or a rotten twig.”

Umber sat himself at the table like thumping down a great heavy sack of dried beans, and glared up at him in something between outrage and resignation. “Stark, you’re a bloody madman,” he said, and Robb laughed and poured him a cup of strong wine, and Umber took it with a low indignant muttering.

Chapter Text

There was plenty of very sincere shouting as well before the end, and when the loudest of it had died down, it was still months to get the Wildlings through the Wall. They went in one holdfast group after another, chosen by lots, and each group kept under guard by Northmen until they’d got up a first big longhouse to take shelter in: Robb had thought, and it had proven true so far, that once the Wildlings had fairly begun, they’d grow attached to their own work, and want to stay in the homes that they were building.

But there were still thirty thousand of the Wildlings left beyond the Wall as the hours of daylight dwindled to minutes, winter coming on them now with great speed. And then the day came that the Wildlings had warned them of, when the sun didn’t even truly rise, nothing more than a paleness coming into the eastern sky behind the mountains. And in that dim shadowed twilight, the wights attacked the encampment in force.

Robb was still there himself, part of the arrangement: Mance Rayder had gone south to the Gift at the very beginning, to keep his people holding to the truce instead of starting to raid the rest of the North. He’d left his lieutenant Tormund behind with Robb to shepherd the rest of them through the Wall, so Robb could keep a strong hand on his own soldiers and the Watch, and keep them from starting fights on this end.

He still had ten thousand men of his fighting force with him, and they’d been making more dragonglass weapons, out of several more chests of points that Sam had sent on to him, but the encampment was still too big and too unruly by far. Robb lost a thousand men to slavering wights in the first furious chaos of only herding everyone into a defensible position atop the hill, which thank the gods he’d had fortified, and they’d barely done that before their own fresh dead were coming back at them out of the dark, clawing with envious rage.

But as soon as he’d got up on the hill himself, Robb knew the battle wasn’t winnable: in the grey half-light, he could see more wights pouring into the valley in the distance, a scuttling crowd of insects dark against the snow, swarming over the pallid frozen river towards them, and every man who fell was getting back up to join them, if they didn’t stab him with dragonglass in time themselves.

“Listen to me!” he roared, over the clash of battle, as more wights flung themselves clawing on the shield wall, despite the hail of dragonglass arrows going into their ranks. “Listen! We’ve no chance but to break out now, and run, as quick as we can. Leave everything but the clothes on your backs and a dragonglass blade; put a waterbag inside your clothes and fill your pockets with a little food. Strip the pack animals; get the children and the old aboard them. Now! We go at the count of a thousand, and anyone who’s not ready will be left behind.”

He set a large-voiced drillmaster shouting the count, and turned to Ryswell. “I’ll need you to break us out,” he said, pointing the direction, south and east out of the valley. “When the count reaches a thousand, you go, and don’t look back.” Dermont straightened with a fervent glow of pride and nodded; he was rounding his men up at once, forming them into a solid block, ready for the charge. Robb drew his knife and started in on speeding up the others with his own hand, going through the milling ranks of the Wildlings at a fast clip and cutting sacks off the mules and horses ruthlessly, to make the others start, and even off the mammoths; one of the giants rumbled a wordless angry protest at him, and Robb glared up at him and pointed at the coming swarm, and then another of the giants began cutting off the rest of the sacks, and putting elderly folk and children up on the mammoths instead.

When the count reached eight hundred, Osha came out of nowhere and got one of Robb’s arms and Hal Mollin got the other, and they hauled him over to his horse; the rest of the guard was formed up in a tight cluster as he mounted, and his squire handed up his helm. Robb put it on and drew Ice, holding the great blade across his lap. It was a strange and grim moment: this would be the first battle he’d lost, he realized. But the odds weren’t going to be seven to one, or even ten to one; in half an hour, there would be a hundred dead men around them for every fighting man he had. He only had to hope they could outrun them, once they got out of the valley, and found a little daylight further south.

“Nine hundred ninety, nine hundred ninety-one,” the shout was going, and Dermont raised his lance and called, “For the king! The King in the North!” and his men shouted, “The King in the North!” and they leveled their lances and went, charging across the whole top of the hill to gain momentum, and they smashed into the mass of wights as the men of the shield wall pulled back out of their way at the last instant.

The guard was moving around Robb at once, into the opening that Dermont’s charge had made; they were a wall of steel protecting him on all sides. The wights were leaping and clawing at them, but the guards had dragonglass spears and were stabbing them away at a good distance; none made it through to him. Up ahead, arrows were coming down like black rain in front of the lancers’ charge, thinning the mass of wights, and the lancers were punching through as he’d hoped.

He risked a look behind: the archers were directly behind the guard, and after them the mass of Wildlings was in motion, a great herd of humanity moving together, the pack animals in the middle, with their own fighting men and the rest of his infantry guarding the flanks together and stabbing away the wights with dragonglass weapons; the men of the shield wall were falling in to enclose them, and the giants were bringing up the rear in their heavy loping pace, swinging their great clubs to smash away wights in all directions.

The lancers broke out into open ground, up ahead, and Dermont split his force into two halves and wheeled them around to come back and smash into the wights on either side of the rest of their force: a good maneuver, opening the hole up wider, and the pace of their escape could quicken. In a moment they were all streaming away towards the open mouth of the valley, still clear, the snow pale blue and catching the little light of the sky.

But that great boiling mass of wights was coming down the frozen Milkwater, rushing to intercept them. The archers had already turned their arrows onto them and were shooting down the front ranks even as they ran, but it was like drops in a bucket. Robb looked at the pace of that onrushing force and drew a breath that ached in his chest and grated out, “Sound the command: shield wall, across the river there.” A moment later, it was too late to call back the words; his herald Boros put the horn to his lips and sounded the command, and Robb shut his eyes a moment as Wendel Manderly peeled off and went riding towards the river at the head of his thousand pikemen from the right flank, all of them running flat out with their shields slung across their backs. Wendel made the shield wall at the best place he could, across a narrower part of the riverbed, just moments before the wights were upon them.

At the mouth of the valley, Robb checked his horse. The guard stayed with him, moving aside out of the flow of the retreat as the Wildlings went streaming past them, the rest of the infantry still guarding their flanks. He turned to look: behind them, not five hundred feet distant, the shield wall was still holding at the narrow span, the blue-green Manderly banners lit against the dark with torchlight, shining on their plate, their shields. They weren’t standing alone: it looked like nearly a thousand Wildling fighters had gone after them, and were helping to stab the wights over the shields.

“Your Grace,” Hal Mollin said, a demand, and Robb looked just once more for Wendel and saw him looking back; Wendel raised a mailed hand, a farewell; then Hal had taken the reins of Robb’s horse and they were moving again, fleeing out alongside the rushing river of humanity. Robb put his head down and fought not to weep; but even though his eyes were closed, Grey Wind’s weren’t, and they looked back once more together and saw the banners, all in black and white and grey, go down and vanish into the clawing horde, as the wights pulled the last of the living men down.

#

It was a two-day forced march, with almost no food and no rest except for a few hours snatched in what little daylight there was, until they reached the first of the long-buried supply caches, the ones he’d left behind. Robb oversaw it being opened up and doled out as fast as they could.

He’d worked out the numbers as they marched. He had thirty-five thousand to feed, even after their losses, but it wasn’t simply a matter of having enough food; it was a matter of time. Much of what was in the caches was food meant to be cooked in a camp, dried vegetables and beans, and any pause was time in which pursuit could reach them. There was still a smell of charnel corpses on the wind blowing from the north, much too close, and he’d bought every inch of the distance in between with blood; he wasn’t giving it back.

Those who weren’t fighting would be getting a quarter-ration; he had them stop eating and start going again almost right away, carrying only enough to keep going for another three days; half the fighters would have a half-ration, and they’d go on next; then the men at the rear would have time to eat a full ration before they began to march. They’d exchange places the next day. That way, each man would only have to carry thirty pounds for the worst stretch of the march, after they passed the last of the caches and had to make it all the rest of the way to Castle Black.

And for now instead he left behind almost a quarter of the cache: they needed speed most when the pursuit might still be so near; he only wanted to carry as little as he could to get them to the next one they’d stop at. It was hard to hear the hungry children crying when he ordered the march to resume, but he wouldn’t spare even the time it would take to give them the food being abandoned.

Perhaps the worst of it was how swiftly and without question they all obeyed him, even the most quarrelsome of the Wildling tribesmen: a trust he almost couldn’t bear to be carrying, with the banners going down again in his mind’s eye, a castle of sand swept away into the tide. It shouldn’t have been so hard. He’d done it before, after all. He’d managed to almost forget, all these years ago now, the battle before Whispering Woods, the one where he’d sent other men to fight Tywin Lannister and die, so that he could be victorious. He’d thought it was worth it, at the time. His men had thought so, too. The ones who’d lived. But he hadn’t been there himself.

He stopped them for a longer rest only after three more days, at the next cache. He climbed a hill at the rear of the force, his guard trailing him watchfully, and with Grey Wind he stood at the top and shut his eyes and breathed deep of the wind with the wolf’s nose instead of his own. They couldn’t smell the dead anymore. “Make fires, and cook as much soup as we can,” he said. “We’ll try and give everyone a full ration today.”

The hot food put heart back into all of them, and Grey Wind went out into the forest and came back licking fresh rabbit from his chops. Everyone was nearly falling where they were, and the air was still clean and crisp; Robb ordered a six-hour halt, and went to sleep himself, on a bed of leaves dug out from under the snow, wrapped in his heavy fur cloak. He was a good campaigner; he slept at once, dreamlessly, and didn’t wake until the six hours were over. But Grey Wind nudged him awake then, and on a deep breath he tasted a faint hint of rot at the back of his throat; instantly he was up and shouting the order to march, to get up and march, and the whole force lurched up almost as one onto their feet and snatched up their packs and went.

They were almost as shambling and thin as the dead by the time they reached Castle Black. Robb hadn’t caught a hint of the dead for six days by then, but they’d long since passed the last of the supply caches, and they’d eaten the last of the food they’d carried two days before. There wasn’t a warm welcome for them. Alliser had been one of the loudest shouters, and several others of the Night’s Watch; to them, Wildlings were the enemy. He was as sour and sullen as ever looking over the survivors trudging out of the tunnel through the Wall, his mouth downturned and graven around with frowning lines, and many of the other men of the Watch were hard-faced and brooding, fingering the hilts of their weapons.

Robb wanted nothing more than to sleep himself at once; but instead, after he’d seen his men and the Wildlings sheltered as best he could, crammed in rows inside the long-unused second stables, and the old half-ruined outbuildings, he went up to the library. There he wrote urgent ravens to Mance to ready him for all the survivors arriving, and to Winterfell, to tell Sansa she must get supplies to the Gift more quickly; another went to Umber at Last Hearth, begging any aid he could send. Then he had Sam bring him maps of the Gift, so he could find old abandoned settlements and ruins where he might disperse the Wildlings to have a little shelter and hunt and forage for themselves.

The next he knew, he woke on a cot in a corner covered with a heavy black fur cloak, with Grey Wind stretched alongside him still sleeping. Sam was at the table and had made a long list of the abandoned settlements, with notes of the distances to the nearest holdfasts and keeps, and had written him twenty separate short raven letters asking those bannermen to send two weeks’ supply to the ruined places.

Robb put a hand on his shoulder, grateful, and signed the letters; Sam gathered them up to send, and Robb sat down with the paper and pen to write the last letter, the worst, to go to Lord Manderly. When I asked, he and his men gave their lives without hesitation to guard our retreat, and saved thirty-five thousand men, women, and children. I cannot hope to console you for his loss; I only want you to know his courage and honor. When I have returned from the Wall, if you wish it, I will come and tell you more of the battle.

He felt as though he wrote the words in blood, and when he put down his pen, he shut his eyes and bowed his head over it. Sam came back with a bowl of soup and some bread and gently put them before him, and Robb roused himself to eat. “Sam,” he said, tiredly, “are there any men of the Watch who don’t hate Wildlings, that you’d trust to keep an eye on the survivors, and keep them and the brothers from openly quarreling?”

“Yes,” Sam said, nodding. “Some of us from the south, and the Essenes. I’ll ask them. We’ll keep everyone else apart, if we can.”

“Good man,” Robb said; he picked up the bowl and tipped the dregs back into his mouth, and Sam said softly, “Come and lie down again, you’ve barely slept,” and after a moment, Robb nodded; he pushed back his chair and went back to the cot. Grey Wind hadn’t so much as twitched the whole time; Robb put his arm around him and sank back into sleep at once.

#

Maester Wornos brought her the raven from the Wall at a run, his chain clanking so Sansa heard him coming from down the corridor and was up from her desk to meet him halfway, the look of wide relief on his face telling her the good news before he even put the scroll in her hands and she saw Sam Tarly’s now-familiar—and lately dreaded—handwriting, saying Two of the rangers saw the king and the Wildlings this morning; they’ll reach the Wall later today. He’s all right—and before she could read any more, all the muscles of her neck and back unclenched so quickly that she nearly staggered and Maester Wornos had to catch her arm and help her to a chair to sit.

She hadn’t protested, when Robb had gone to the Wall. He was right to go, so it would only have been selfishness, making it harder for him to leave when he’d have to go anyway, and she’d known that he would get enough of that from Talisa—and Mother, too, if Sansa was fair about it, which she didn’t especially want to be. But it had still made her feel sick to her stomach to watch him ride away again, the way it always did every time, as though she was back to being a prisoner in the Red Keep, trapped and alone and exposed.

Even after Brienne and Tyrion Lannister had both told her that she was being sent back, even the whole way riding to Riverrun, even once she’d actually been standing in the courtyard of the keep, she still hadn’t truly believed that she was free until she’d seen Robb again, until she’d been safe in his arms. He’d grown so much since the last time she’d seen him that it had almost felt like being in Father’s arms again.

And she knew, more deeply and horribly than any lesson anyone could ever again teach her, that Robb couldn’t truly keep her safe, just as Father hadn’t been able to. But she could trust that she was safe for as long as he was there, because they’d have to take her away from him before they could hurt her again.

But when he was gone, some part of her was always expecting the worst, even though she’d put on a face of calm steadiness for the rest of the world to see. It hadn’t really been a surprise when the first message had come from Castle Black to tell her that they’d had no word from the Milkwater for more than a week. She’d only nodded and begun writing down the list that had been lurking in the back of her head ever since Robb had left: the list of men that she could marry, to protect her family and Robb’s son, men who wouldn’t try to seize the power and the throne for themselves.

It wasn’t a long list, and three of the men on it had gone beyond the Wall with Robb. She’d already sent a raven to one of the few left, her great-uncle Brynden, to ask him to come to the North as quickly and quietly as he could, without telling him why. The Blackfish would almost certainly balk if she told him in a letter. He wasn’t ideal. He was too old, and a southerner, and she looked too much a Tully herself: there would be too many Northmen grumbling that House Stark was full of fish, and too many others grumbled already that Crown Prince Brandon was half Volantene. But the Blackfish was the only man on the list that it was safe to invite to Winterfell and keep on hand, just in case, because there was enough excuse to have him visiting Mother and standing beside them in a time of trouble: it wouldn’t alert the powerful, hungry men who weren’t on the list.

Sansa hadn’t told anyone the real reason for the invitation, not even Mother. She would have made as much fuss as the Blackfish himself, if she’d known. Mother still dreamed of seeing her in the kind of marriage Sansa had dreamed of for herself back when she’d been a little girl who hadn’t known any better. And there wasn’t any sense in arguing with Mother about it, so Sansa had just stuck to the simpler story: she was waiting for the right man.

But there wasn’t a lord in the North, in the world, who wouldn’t look at her and think first that she was a doorway to House Stark, to power, for himself and for the children she’d bear him. And it made her chest hurt with a dull ache sometimes when she thought of those children, the children she’d never have, but she wouldn’t willingly open that door to any man in the world. She wasn’t that little girl anymore, who thought that the world inside Winterfell was the world everywhere. She knew now what she had inside these walls, she understood how rare and precious it was, and she wouldn’t ever risk it again unless she had to.

She’d known it even riding back to Winterfell at Robb’s side. She’d felt the eyes of all his lords on her, the same way Joffrey’s eyes had rested on her across the courtyard at Winterfell, and now it made her skin crawl. No one had done anything, and most of them hadn’t even meant anything dreadful by it, not like Bolton or Cerwyn. Most of them wouldn’t have meant anything dreadful for a long time. But if Robb was gone, and she gave one of them a child of House Stark, she didn’t believe for an instant that Brandon would live to take the crown.

And she didn’t want to marry someone like Talisa, a nonentity with no ambition or power. That man would have been useless to protect their house in any trouble, and she’d look at a man like that, next to her brother, and she’d never be able to respect him even a little. When she’d considered the idea, for the sake of children, she’d thought of Cersei, married to that awful slobbering drunk of a king: eating and drinking and bellowing and thrusting his cock out all the time, trying desperately to make himself big enough so that no one would notice he couldn’t fill up his crown. And meanwhile, next to him, Jaime, as beautiful as a god, the greatest swordsman in the realm, proud and powerful and loving her, ready to kill for her, to die for her. Sansa couldn’t blame her for breaking her vows, even if it had been stupid and reckless and sinful. She could blame Cersei for everything else, but not that.

Sansa was glad she’d never wanted Robb that way herself. He would have fallen on his own sword, first, and it would have been horrible. But she had still taken the lesson from Cersei’s rage. She wouldn’t take a man into her life, give him a claim on her, unless she could honor him. And she couldn’t really do that, unless he was dangerous. A man she could trust to defend her and their children, against all the people who would want to hurt them. But a man like that would be dangerous to Robb and his children, too, unless he loved them as much as she did. She had wistfully thought about taking Hal Mollin, mostly when she was holding one of the babies in her arms, and the deep ache of longing went through her. But she also didn’t want to marry someone who’d rather wistfully dream of being in Robb’s bed than hers, and anyway Hal was determined to die for Robb if he could possibly manage it, so he wouldn’t have been much use either.

So there wouldn’t be anyone, and she had made her own peace with that, even if she knew that Mother never would, and Robb wouldn’t have either, if he’d known. He already felt guilty about taking so much of her time, which was how he thought of it, when instead he’d given her everything she did want, the place she hadn’t even been able to imagine for herself. He’d seen, before she even had recognized it herself, that she could help him, and he hadn’t cared about any of the reasons why most people wouldn’t have let her do it.

He’d trusted her and listened to her and given her power, and she didn’t need more than that. The work was its own reward, and she was so desperately glad for it, and only the more when Robb was gone. It had been even harder to bear, before she’d been the Hand—when Robb had gone away to fight the ironborn, and she’d had nothing to do but needlework, and helping Mother to supervise the repairs to Winterfell. Even now the work, as much of it as there was, hadn’t been enough to keep her from thinking about all the thousand things that could go wrong, all the ways that Robb could lose and die.

So it hadn’t even surprised her, to be told that Robb might have been killed. It was the relief of knowing that he was all right that nearly brought her low. Sansa had to sit there in the chair and take seven slow breaths, the way Septa Mordane had taught her a lady should do, when she felt she was at risk of betraying herself, before she got up again and smiled at Maester Wornos and said, “Ask Septon Gellis to have the bells rung in thanksgiving,” which would tell all the keep and the winter town that the king was safe, and send that news running from all the lurking spies out to the rest of the North and to the south—to all their enemies, who’d surely already started to plot and plan, during these last few weeks of dread.

Then she went back to her office and put her list of names in the fire, with glad relief, and after a small grudging inward struggle, she took the news first to Talisa, even though she knew she would find her with Nymeria. Sansa couldn’t even mind that anymore. Before the terrible sudden silence, Robb had been sending messages from the Milkwater every few days to be passed along: they’d hatched a flock of ravens at the encampment there, to exchange with the archivists at Castle Black. When seven days had gone without a message, even before the horrible word had come from Castle Black, Talisa had suddenly declared that they needed a true nursery for all the children, with the new baby coming.

Walda had sorted out three warm rooms in the north tower which could be joined together, enough space for the children to run and play in, and Talisa and Nymeria had moved to sleep there with the children. They’d been in there night and day ever since, keeping the children occupied without going out, with Talisa’s guards on watch in the corridors and Nymeria’s people making their every meal in the kitchens.

Talisa burst into tears as soon as Sansa told them, an eruption of relief so passionate that it made Sansa feel better to watch it, even though she wouldn’t ever have let herself behave the same way. And after she’d got Talisa sitting down, Nymeria even turned and said abruptly, “I’ll write to my father to see who made any moves in King’s Landing.” Sansa inclined her head, accepting the offered truce, letting the last of her own lingering resentment go. They would have needed Nymeria, she saw now; they could have relied on her to protect the children, Talisa’s children, and Dorne was at her back: a priceless support, when the Lannisters would be wary of offending them.

Before going on to Mother, Sansa stopped to put a hand on the cot where Brandon and Bert were having a nap, both clutching the stuffed wolves she’d made them. They wouldn’t even have remembered Robb, if he hadn’t come home. It would have been her work to make sure they grew up as Stark men. It still was her work, and she was so glad she didn’t have to take a man she didn’t want, a man who wouldn’t help her with it.

But she did want as much help as she could get, so after she’d told Mother and Rickon, she said to him, “I want to try and get direwolf pups for the boys. Do you think you could find some?”

Rickon brightened at the idea of anything that would take him out of the keep, but he said, “I don’t know. There aren’t many of them this far south, and they won’t breed this close to winter.” But he was glad for the excuse to go out into the wilds anyway, and after a month, he came back after a four day stretch away from the keep with a single pup, a ragged skinny thing with matted fur that snarled and tried to bite anyone else who tried to feed her.

“The rest of her litter starved,” Rickon said. “I didn’t find any sign of the dam or her pack. She might have had to leave them behind and go after more hunting.”

Sansa stroked the pup’s head, absently avoiding the attempt to grab her hand in her jaws and putting the milk-soaked rag back into her mouth. “She’s too old to really get used to people properly,” she said, reluctantly. “She won’t be safe for Brandon.”

“No,” Rickon agreed. “But her pups will be, if you raise her,” and she looked at him surprised; he shrugged. “I think you need one more than them now, anyway.”

The pup gave a whine under her hand, where she’d accidentally tightened her grip on the scruff of her neck; Sansa relaxed it and stroked her again. The sensible words trembled on her lips: I don’t have the time to train her, I don’t have any use for a wolf, she would only frighten my girls and get in my way,  but they didn’t come out of her mouth. “Thank you,” she said instead, and meant it, even after the pup had gone through every shoe unwarily left out in her reach in the entire keep and some tack besides, not to mention nearly getting her teeth into one of the big leather-bound account ledgers on Sansa’s bookshelves, and acquired the name Menace.

Menace did get in the way, and she took enormous amounts of time. Sansa had to ride out with her twice a day as soon as she was weaned; wearing her out with long runs was the only way to make her manners remotely acceptable inside a keep. Sansa took a guard with her every time she went out, of course, and she soon realized that their younger bannermen were quietly wrangling for the chance to be one of the guard of the princess. She knew they just wanted Robb to be pleased, when he came back, but after a little thought, she realized—it might be another way out, if she ever did need one.

She sent for the dressmaker, and two days later rode out with ten men that she’d hand-picked from the rest, in a riding habit of dark grey wool with broad shoulders stiffened out a little wider than they needed to be, to make her look bigger; she was grateful for her height as never before. She let Menace set a blistering pace, so they’d be impressed she could keep up, and spoke to each of them by name, and started the work of making them truly her guard.

It felt strange at first to go out running so hard and fast, at the head of the pack. Arya had been the tomboy of their family, running wild out of doors. Like a hoyden from the East, Sansa could hear Septa Mordane saying censoriously, even now. She remembered feeling smug and proud of how she could sit so long without fidgeting, and behave decorously at table, and how she always kept her well-mannered palfrey exactly to the middle of the pack when the court went out hunting, never interfering with the huntsmen; she’d always avoided being in at the kill. A lady does not indulge in bloodlust. It is her duty to restrain her menfolk from it, whenever she can.

But now she needed men to stop thinking of her as a lady, and start thinking of her as strong. And once she’d got that thought into the core of her guard, she’d quietly recruit more men from among Robb’s loyal soldiers. She’d take every chance she could arrange to reward the ones who served her well with holdfasts and keeps and their own companies. And then—if some day Robb didn’t come back, she’d have a loyal pack of warriors and lords behind her, men who owed her their advancement, who were used to taking her orders and competing for her approval. And together they’d save her from having to marry someone unworthy or untrustworthy, until she could see Brandon safely to his throne.

Sansa expected it to be harder than it was; instead she started feeling, soon enough, like she couldn’t ride fast enough to satisfy herself. She had to pull up to avoid foundering her horses and her men, often enough. The first time Menace was big enough to be taken hunting, she brought down a big hare, and Sansa rode in right after the two huntsmen and found them both hesitating; Menace was growling at them, her muzzle red. She growled at Sansa, too, when she got off her horse, but Sansa said sternly, “Don’t you dare growl at me,” and went up to her and put her hand on the hare, and held out a treat in her other hand, of good rich fatty bacon, which Menace liked much better than game. “Let go.”

Menace huffed around it, and then let go and took the bacon from her hand; Sansa petted her and told her what a good girl she was, and stood up with the carcass in one hand and blood all over her clothes and her red hands, and all the eyes of the guard were on her, but they were looking down at her with the respect men gave to other men who did things they feared to do themselves, and not a single one of them was thinking about how he could use her to get at her family.

Chapter Text

After three months at the Wall, Robb had managed to get things into some order. He’d sent most of the Wildlings on to the Gift in larger groups, and Mance was sorting them out there. Before they’d gone, he’d had them clear the ground before the Wall, cutting down nearly six hundred trees, and giants had carried those trees through the tunnel and helped to make a great wooden palisade around all the grounds of Castle Black, to guard the keep from the south. They used more of the wood to repair all the outbuildings and even put up new barracks; by the time most of them left, there were places for thirty thousand men to sleep within the walls. There was still plenty of timber left, and it was being turned into spikes and arrow-shafts and spears as quick as they could work.

The enormous gift of labor had reconciled the Night’s Watch grudgingly to their presence, and after the bulk of the Wildlings had gone, and only willing volunteers had remained, the temper of the company settled into a better state. Alliser had mended the keep since Robb had first marched north. The barracks had been chinked and plastered, and the bathhouse was open and even improved: the Essenes had built on a kind of steam-bathing chamber where many men could sit at once, breathing deeply of warm, moist air. It was a less miserable place, and the men in it less miserable as well.

Robb had grimly sent out three joint parties of rangers and Wildling scouts, all of them volunteers, to go back beyond the Wall and look for the army of wights. They’d found signs of pursuit as far as the Haunted Fork, but after that, it seemed that the last of the wights had simply turned around and gone back where they’d came. The last party of scouts warily followed their trail all the way back to the valley of the Milkwater, and found it deserted again, except for heaps of corpses that had been stabbed with dragonglass. It seemed as if the wights had attacked the valley for no reason but to kill them all, and once balked of their prey, had all gone away back into the deep north again.

The scouts brought Wendel Manderly’s body back with them: still mostly in armor, his helm lost and one of the straps of his breastplate broken, and an eye gone, clawed out it looked by fingernails. There were deep bloody lines gouged on his face and throat, and many stab wounds in his legs, one of them broken in four places: his horse had likely been killed beneath him, and he’d been pinned beneath it on the ground. But the wights hadn’t killed him: his own dragonglass dagger was jutting out of his neck. The cold had preserved him completely; he’d been frozen so solid that not even ravens had been at him to pluck out the other eye, or his lips, and his face was in a rictus of horror and agony, his teeth bared with the effort of driving in the blade.

Robb looked at him and said, “Thank you for bringing him,” and had the body covered and put in a coldroom, until they could send him home to his father, and then he went to his rooms and was sick into the chamberpot, and sat on the bed with his face in his hands in silence afterwards a long time. Lord Manderly had written back to him with more generosity than Robb could almost endure; he’d spoken with pride of Wendel’s courage, and how it did not surprise him, but gave him comfort, that he had gone deliberately to his death without fear. Robb wondered if he would still feel so, if he’d seen his son’s face. He felt like a coward for being glad that the body would rot before it reached him.

He went out and declared a wake for the dead, and asked for volunteers to stand the watch and stay sober. They cleared the ground and lit a great bonfire out back in the central courtyard of the outbuildings, and many smaller ones around it, and gathered there together, in heavy fur cloaks and wrapped in blankets. Speaking at the fire, Robb gave thanks to the men who’d given their lives to save the rest, and spoke of their courage and honor, and he named them one after another, to the last: he’d gathered their names in messages from Manderly. It took a long time. First some of the Wildlings and then all the men began to repeat the names of the dead after him, and when at last he’d finished, abruptly one of the Wildling men stood, a chief named Huma of the Rusken tribe. He and his clan had agreed to stay at Castle Black until the last, waiting longer than others, because they came from so far north that he and his people had never raided south of the Wall; they hunted great tusked beasts that lived in the icy northern waters, and quarreled with other Wildlings more than with the Watch.

“We take their names,” he said, in his thick burred accent. “These names, for our children; they live on,” and he cut off his own honor braids with his dagger, and threw them in the fire, to show he meant it as an oath, and many of the other Wildlings murmured agreement and raised their cups. Robb swallowed hard, and thought he’d write to Talisa himself, and ask her to take Wendel’s name for the child who would be born before he returned home.

He didn’t drink over-much as the jugs of spirit went round; he was still a little wary of some quarrel breaking out. But he drank enough to warm his belly and ease his muscles, and he walked among the fires to speak with his men: the scouts and rangers who’d made the dangerous journey, the officers of the Watch and the Wildling chiefs, and the officers of his bannermen, and many of the men who’d been with him all these months.

The gathering was a quiet one at first, but one man of the Watch had been a minstrel once; he brought out a lute, and sang a few songs for them despite the cold, and then one of the Wildling men got up and went into their barracks and brought out a drum and began to play it, a strange deep rhythm that went around in circles. Some of the other Wildlings looked askance, as if he’d done something improper, but after a moment, three others went inside and brought out more, and they began playing together.

Others took up a deep chanting, in the Old Tongue; Robb caught a few words he knew, here and there, enough to recognize it for a prayer to the old gods to receive men of valor, and others began to clap along, a steady beat going with the drums. And slowly some of the Northmen began to join in, even the men of the Watch.

It was a sound that filled the air and drove back the dark; Robb felt it inside his own body, coming up through his feet and echoing in his chest, and after a while he found it was shaking tears loose that he couldn’t stop. He rose and walked with Grey Wind a little distance away from the fires into the dark unlit ground between the outermost buildings and the palisade. He stood breathing through grief and guilt, and then he heard a gasping sob, not far away. Dermont Ryswell was sitting hunched upon one of the remnants of the logs that had gone to the palisade, his face pressed into his hands, and he was weeping in strangled gasps.

Robb hesitated, and then went to him, and put his hand on his shoulder. Dermont saw him and instantly bent to try and scrub away the tears. “It’s all right,” Robb said, and Dermont looked up again and saw his own tears. His eyes widened a little; but then he swallowed and lowered his head back down. “It’s not evil to grieve.”

Dermont shook his head almost violently, and then he said thickly, “If I’d got us through quicker,” his voice breaking, and Robb dragged in a breath and shut it up inside him. 

He couldn’t speak a moment, struggling. Then Dermont snuffled again, and Robb said, his voice harsh in his own ears, “You got us through as quick as anyone could have. Your maneuver at the end; it got us clear much faster.” Dermont looked up at him almost with desperation, longing to be told—that it hadn’t been his fault. And it hadn’t been, of course.

“The mistake happened before the battle even started, and it was mine,” Robb said. “We lost control of the mountains to the north. In the week before the attack, half the scouts who went there never returned. I should have moved the encampment. And I didn’t, because we were victorious easily the first time, and I thought I understood the enemy and what they could bring to bear upon us, so I was incautious. You saved us from that mistake. You, and Manderly, and the men who held the line.”

He looked away, his jaw tight. He hadn’t said it aloud, before, but he’d known it all along; he’d known it as he saw the wights come pouring down the valley, out of the mountains to the north. Two days before, Tormund saying in his laconic way, “Liss and Grondi still haven’t come back; not Mikkel either,” and Robb had said, “Send the other scouts back as a team to try and find signs of them. We’ll give it three more days,” instead of saying have everyone pack up, we’ll move camp further south, and if he’d only done that—

He shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, Dermont had stood up and was gazing at him bewildered, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that the king he followed was, in fact, just a man, a man who’d spent the lives of a thousand men to save his own from a fool’s mistake, and then Dermont said, “You saved us.” Robb stared at him. “Everyone says so. If we’d had any other commander, we’d all have died. It’s what all of us told the Watch about it, us and the Wildlings. There were ten hundred thousand of them—they were so fast. We hardly saw them before they were on us. We all thought we were dead.” Dermont shook his head, confused, and asked it as if sincerely, “Where could we have moved the camp? They hunted us almost the whole way south. They’d just have caught us out in the open, with no chance to hold them off.”

Robb turned away and put his palms hard against his eyes as if he could press the words in through his skull and let himself believe them, or perhaps as if he could keep them out instead, so he could feel it as he ought to feel it, that he’d commanded a thousand men to their deaths, and left them behind; he’d sentenced them, but he hadn’t seen his own justice done, by fighting alongside them to the end.

He sat down abruptly, groping for the log, and put his hand in Grey Wind’s fur when the wolf came and nosed at him to give comfort; he had his forehead resting in his other hand, and his face was wet. Dermont sat down beside him slowly in the dark, his own breath still a little ragged and his uncertainty so loud that Robb could feel it through his skin: he was probably turning the boy’s world upside down, letting him know that even lords and kings were mortal. Robb couldn’t care enough to pull himself together. At least it was a more gentle lesson than the one he’d had, at the same age, he thought a little uncharitably.

If Dermont wanted to speak, he didn’t find any words to do it with. They sat in silence for a while, and then a man came out between two of the buildings nearby and went to the edge of the palisade and pissed what sounded like an entire barrel’s worth, groaning noisily in relief, and then farted almost as long, so loudly that Grey Wind flattened his ears back against his head in disapproval. As the man went staggering back towards the fires, Dermont was stiff in scandalized outrage, and then as a final toot came floating back around the corner, Robb started to laugh, a little at first, and then so hard his belly hurt, until he ended gasping for breath, and afterwards he stood and smiled down, feeling more gentle; Dermont was gazing up at him with wide wonder. “It’s just as well for the gods to remind us once in a while that we’re only human,” Robb said. “Come on. We should go have another drink before whoever that was finishes all there is.”

He held out a hand, and Dermont stared at it a moment, and then a little shyly reached out and took it and let Robb pull him to his feet. He trailed after him the rest of the night, and after three more drinks, which had suddenly been badly needed—or possibly five, and almost certainly not more than seven—when Robb decided he’d probably better stop and stagger back to his rooms before he fell down and froze to death overnight instead, Dermont appointed himself to help him get there.

The help was warranted; the steps of the keep were icy and treacherous to sober men, but after they got into his bedchamber, Robb discovered that actually Dermont had been thinking about his king being mortal in a very different way. Robb didn’t entirely follow at first; Dermont stirred up the fire and put on another couple of logs, and then asked a little tentatively if he could…and then started helping him undress, which was helpful at the moment, and eased him onto his bed and got his boots off. And then his trousers, which made it a little cold, because Dermont didn’t put the covers over him, and instead asked even more tentatively if he could…and then he pushed Robb’s shirt up and took his cock in his mouth.

The answer did seem to be yes, he could, and by the time Robb had sorted that out in his head, he had his hands buried in Dermont’s thick brown curls and was holding on for dear life as he got sucked off with frantic urgency and enormous force.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, suddenly wide awake, and came, and oh gods it was good, and before he had managed to have any other thought about the matter, Dermont had taken his hand and kissed it fervently and said, “Thank you,” as if Robb had done him a great favor, and then covered him up snugly and went out of the room again. Robb lay staring at the ceiling a few more blank moments, and then he fell asleep.

He woke up feeling deeply sorry for himself, rang with urgency for someone to bring him a raw egg beaten in hot milk and a cold cloth, and after he swallowed the first and lay a while under the second, he slowly and painfully got up and went to piss, and stared down at his cock and remembered.

It wasn’t a wholly novel idea. Theon had tried to talk him into sucking each other’s cocks a few times, and the thought hadn’t been unappealing, especially after they’d been down in the winter town and he’d had one of the tavern girls sitting squirming in his lap for a while. The only reason Robb hadn’t done it was that he’d already known far more than he wanted to about all the places Theon’s cock had been, and he’d been certain that if he added his own mouth to the list, very soon any number of people would know far more than he wanted them to about that.

So he wasn’t outraged, but Robb did think he’d have to have a word with Dermont, who’d been fairly drunk as well and likely hadn’t thought through what he was doing, and maybe also needed to have it gently told to him that he shouldn’t blab about having sucked the king’s cock.

Only he asked Dermont to come to his rooms with him privately, to have the word, and Dermont took it the wrong way: the moment Robb had closed the door, Dermont was kissing him, with exactly as much fervor as the night before. Or perhaps he hadn’t taken it the wrong way after all, because Robb kissed him back, and they wrestled out of their clothes and ended up rutting wildly on the bed together in a frantic rush—mostly, Robb felt afterwards, guiltily, because it had saved him from thinking through what he was doing.

He kept putting that off for a bit longer, but it became very clear by the next day that at least Dermont did know exactly what he was doing: he was fucking the king, and he couldn’t believe his luck. Of course all sorts of people liked the idea of fucking the king, but it had always left Robb cold. He didn’t want to be wearing his crown in bed; that was nearly his only refuge from it. Except Dermont only cared about the crown in reverse: it hadn’t occurred to him that he could fuck the king, until Robb had let him see the crown being put on the table by the bed for the night, and now his plan was to lurk about hopefully until Robb took it off, and then see if he might get at his cock instead.

It was a very good plan, simple and effective. Dermont was a good field officer: thought quick on his feet, saw openings and took them, followed through without hesitation. Also he was a truly champion cocksucker; Robb hadn’t properly appreciated the first time, but he very much appreciated the second, standing up in the room he’d taken as an office two days later with his trousers around his ankles and Dermont’s hands gripping his ass and his head working with furious energy. Dermont might not have known what he was doing by Yara’s standards, but Robb hadn’t any complaints; enthusiasm went a very long way indeed. Afterwards, lying on the floor before the hearth, he asked a bit dazedly, “Have you ever even done this before?” 

Dermont was stretched beside him on his side, the better to gaze at him with a glowing and satisfied expression. “Oh, yes,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised to be asked, and when Robb eyed him, he added in what was somehow an innocent way, “I’ve got two foster-brothers. We started taking turns when we were thirteen.”

“Precocious of you,” Robb said, wryly, and then he pushed Dermont over onto his back, and Dermont’s eyes got enormous and shocked, and he tried—not for very long, admittedly—to stop Robb doing it, as if he thought it was beneath the royal dignity. Which it probably was, but fuck the royal dignity, and though Robb had mostly meant it to be fair, he discovered he rather liked cock himself. He nuzzled at Dermont’s cock and kissed it, the tender way he liked it when Talisa did it, the sweet tease of her soft lips, mouthing over it, and he liked doing it himself, feeling the warm tender skin over the urgent hardness.

Dermont had propped himself up on both elbows and was just gazing down at him glassily and softly saying, “Oh,” every so often, breathed out as if he didn’t really believe this was happening to him, but when Robb took the head in his mouth and sucked him, he evidently became convinced, because his elbows went out from under him and he slid flat on his back and just lolled there in ecstasy while Robb worked out where to put his head so he could get any more of it in his mouth. Then suddenly Dermont was saying urgently, “Oh—oh, your—Robb, I’m—you should—” which was just enough warning that Robb got his head out of the way before Dermont was coming, his cock pulsing and spurting in his hand. Robb had never seen it happen before from that close, only felt it from inside, and there was something delicious about watching it, a glow of satisfaction of his own; he even bent his head and mouthed at him a little through it, to feel the sensation of it against his lips, and Dermont moaned wildly.

Robb resigned himself to having his cock sucked on a regular basis afterwards; there didn’t seem to be much help for it. At least not as long as he was at the Wall, and he was going to be here a while longer. He no longer expected to be fighting the wights at a moment’s notice, but he was sure he’d have to fight them sooner or later. That army, a million strong, hadn’t gone away into the air, and if they’d hated the Wildlings enough to come down on them full-force, just for the sake of murdering them, how much more would they hate the Night’s Watch, and the Wall itself, which kept them penned in the far north? But if they were giving him time, he’d use it, and that meant he’d have to prepare differently.

He’d written to Mance to ask for Wildling volunteers. Robb couldn’t spend what might be nine years of winter at the Wall, waiting, so he’d need at least a week’s notice to get back in time from Winterfell, if he kept fast horses all along the kingsroad ready for him to change, and he’d much prefer to have three weeks’ warning instead. So he’d learn from his last mistake: he’d send scouts out a month’s journey into the North, to live in two-man huts scattered throughout the countryside, with eight ravens for Castle Black apiece. They’d send two ravens a week to report, and every month change places with another pair. If ever a raven didn’t come, the Watch would go on alert and send word to Winterfell; and if the second didn’t come, they would all assume the attack was coming.

And he couldn’t make the Watch ten times bigger overnight, but he’d have his bannermen send soldiers to serve a rotation at the Wall, a year’s duty for each company, so there would always be at least twenty thousand men at Castle Black, a garrison that would be big enough to hold the Wall even against a million wights as long as their supply lasted. And he meant to see to it they had a year’s worth of that supply, at all times, and everything ready that they’d need to repel the wights during a siege.

Once he’d put all those arrangements in place, Robb thought, he’d be able to go home, and relieve the rest of the soldiers he’d kept all this time so far. But that would be several more months at least, and Dermont had already twice refused to be dismissed to go home even before there’d been cocksucking to be had, so getting rid of him now didn’t seem very likely. Or at all fun. So Robb tolerated it, if that was the right word—it wasn’t—when Dermont would trail around the keep after him, waiting for chances to get him and his cock all to himself. The chances were coming fairly often, but evidently not often enough; after a few weeks, Dermont observed that the water in his washbasin was freezing solid overnight these days, and asked Robb with a rather transparent air of concern if he wasn’t sleeping cold at night, and if he’d like a bed-warming partner, carefully taking no notice of the very large direwolf dozing at the hearth who could easily take more of the bed than Robb did himself whenever allowed.

Robb thought for nearly three seconds about getting his cock sucked twice a day and said, “It is getting colder out there,” and let him move his things in, except that evening, Dermont came in with his eyes brilliant with excitement, and stripped naked next to the bed and greased Robb’s cock, and then straddled his hips and slowly and pantingly, open-mouthed, eased himself carefully down.

“Oh, fuck,” Robb said, strangled, and gripped Dermont’s thighs and rocked his hips up into him, and realized much too late to do anything about it that Dermont hadn’t just seized another opening, he’d made a breach through the walls of the citadel and was now firmly planted inside. He didn’t have to go to any lengths at all to catch Robb in a yielding moment anymore; he was going to be in his bed, every night, and cocksucking clearly wasn’t the only thing he had in mind.

To be fair, Robb didn’t especially want to repel the invader. He was glad to have warm, eager company in his bed, to snuggle in under the heavy covers and luxuriate in the deep animal pleasure of hands on his body, stroking him; kisses in the dark with their legs tangling, their bodies pressed naked together. And he hadn’t meant to be grateful to Yara for the little bag she’d left with Talisa, but the practice made it much easier now to take Dermont’s cock when he firmly took a turn at that, too. Robb lay panting on his side in the bed as Dermont carefully and worshipfully pushed it into him. It felt deliciously different than the metal phallus had been, warm and pulsing and soft as well as hard. Dermont had oiled himself thoroughly, and he pushed in and out a few times to make certain he could move well enough, and then started fucking Robb very enthusiastically, and not unlike a battering ram going after a three-layer portcullis.

“Nngh,” Robb said, a little high-pitched, and then braced himself against the bedframe for dear life and just held on. Dermont had to stop every so often to keep from just going over, and Robb got most of his breathing done then, until Dermont started in again. By the fourth go-around, Dermont had bashed through all the gates and was coming straight in with no resistance, and there was an almost sparkling sensation going in the back of Robb’s head, and Dermont reached around and got hold of his cock. Almost instantly Robb was just spilling wildly in his hand; he gripped his hand around Dermont’s and thrust urgently through their fists as he came for what seemed like days, panting raggedly, and Dermont moaned and pushed in deep and came himself.

Dermont tumbled almost at once straight into the sleep of the just, and Robb a little gingerly shifted himself over onto his back and went limp, whoofing out a half-laughing breath. He did like cock, but he was going to have to save enjoying it that way for special occasions; he was going to be eating all his meals tomorrow standing up.

But he was grateful for Dermont’s enthusiasm, in every sense of the word. The physical relief had warmed him through, but it was the faith that had eased his spirits. Robb had been taught how to give orders nearly from the cradle; he’d cut his teeth on pulling unruly Northern bannermen into line at the age of sixteen, and he’d been a king before that year was out. Command had always been a natural thing, and he’d rarely felt it as an effort or a burden. But since they’d come back from the Milkwater, every order had tasted like bitter ash in his mouth. There’s no such thing as a king, Nymeria had said to him; but he still had to be that imaginary thing called a king, and he couldn’t do it without believing in himself, without believing that the orders he gave were the right ones. 

He took Dermont with him when he rode to see Stonedoor keep reopened: another of the Wildling clan-chiefs, Soren Shieldbreaker, had agreed to garrison the castle with his men. Since the wake, all but the most stubborn of the Night’s Watch had reconciled themselves to the presence of the Wildlings, and Alliser had agreed after only a little pressing to allow some of them to help reopen the abandoned castles on the Wall. Chief Huma and his men would go to Eastwatch, where their fishing skills would be of good use on the bay, and Ardra Rockcutter had volunteered to take Rimegate: she and her clan lived in the Frostfangs, and had some skill with working stone, which Robb hoped would let them make repairs to that badly-damaged keep.

Stonedoor didn’t need much mending; the keep was built squarish of thick blocks of pale, hard stone, which had resisted the wear of centuries, and was named for the gate that blocked its tunnel, a single massive slab of the same stone, raised and lowered with great chains like a portcullis. The keep lay halfway between Castle Black and Westwatch, and Robb wanted it serving as a waystation for patrols traveling the whole top of the Wall. “And I’ll send you supply to keep against a mustering,” Robb told Soren, as they finished walking over the keep and making note of what was needed to make the handful of repairs, and to secure its defenses. “If there’s food and arms stockpiled here, then my bannermen will be able to answer more quickly, carrying less, to get to Castle Black.”

But the keep was cold. Their fires barely warmed the air at first, the icy stone walls soaking up all the heat and giving nothing back, as if they were frozen and needed thawing. Robb was even more glad to have Dermont and Grey Wind waiting together in his bedroll by the time he sought it that first night, coming in off the battlements. Between the two of them, Robb managed to stop shivering and then at last get warm again, and Dermont took his hands and breathed on his cold fingers and sucked on them until they got warm and his cock got hard. Robb was too tired for lovemaking, but he liked just having their bodies pressed together; he was grateful all over again to have Dermont with him.

But when they returned to Castle Black, there was a raven letter waiting, from Lord Ryswell; Robb read it and sighed out a little regret, and then went to tell Dermont he was going home to be wed. “Oh,” Dermont said, and looked up wistfully. “I could tell him I can’t—”

Robb silenced him with his fingers, gently pressed to his lips. “This isn’t an ordinary match,” he said. “You’ve been betrothed to Wylla, Lord Manderly’s granddaughter. I’ve no doubt it’s because he’s heard of your valor at the Milkwater. And your great-aunt, Lady Barbrey, learning of the match, has offered to adopt you as her heir. You’ll be Lord of Barrowton after her.” Dermont only stared up at him exactly as woebegone as if he wasn’t being made the heir to a great house of the North. Robb added, “Wylla’s a fine young woman—I met her in White Harbor. You’ll like her, I think. She’s quite fierce. She wanted to hear all about the battles.”

Dermont only sighed deeply, his shoulders sinking. “She’s still a girl.” It had a quality of despair. 

“You don’t like girls at all?” Robb said. 

“I like them,” Dermont said, even more gloomily.

There certainly wasn’t anything for a girl not to like, to look at him, but then Robb thought about the way Dermont went at it, and said decisively, “Right. You’ll be leaving in a week, then. And I’m going to teach you a few things first.” Dermont looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Enthusiasm can only carry you so far.”

#

It only took Robb a week to get back to Winterfell when at last he went home. Waystations had been built—or rebuilt—every four hours along the kingsroad: each had a large stable with room for reindeer and horses trained to drive, and a small house with a large room downstairs and five bedrooms above. Some of them were being manned by Essene horsemasters, who’d learned at Winterfell what they needed to do differently to look after beasts in the cold. Robb drove himself, glad of Besta’s lessons; by taking only Hal Mollin and Osha along, and changing animals at each stop, he was able to whisk past three of them in a day on the hard-packed kingsroad, Grey Wind sticking his head over the side of their sleigh and panting in delight at the speed.

It was deeply strange to be back so quick, after being gone so long. He’d been at the Wall almost a year, and Winterfell was wholly changed when he arrived, blanketed outside in thick fresh snow, and inside glowing with warmth and life. The glassgardens had been repaired and planted, and there was fresh fruit on the tables; the fragrant smell of Volantene spices filled the air and the food; and he had another son: Talisa laid little Wendel swaddled in his arms, smiling tearfully as she welcomed him, and he looked down at the boy and blinked away his own tears, and kissed her deeply in gratitude.

Brandon and Bert and Elia were all walking and talking, and they were shy of him at first: he was a stranger to them now, a sharp pang through him worse than a blade when his own heir hid his face in Talisa’s neck and refused to come to his arms. Mother told him to look after them as much as he could, to mend it. He was glad to do it, hungry to be with them after all the time he’d lost, but it was even more strange to go from war and the Wall to holding little children in his arms and cutting up food small for them and getting their nappies changed and playing blocks with them on the floor or singing to them.

But he didn’t care how strange it was, or how he scandalized the nurses, who plainly thought this beneath the royal dignity as well; he would have given all of it twice over, the work and the strangeness both, the first day when Brandon came in a wobbling run to him in the morning to be picked up and tossed, Bert toddling right after and Elia angrily wailing until he managed to get her too, all three of them cuddled into a big squirming armful and yelling, and Brandon said, “Da!” and yanked on his beard.

Then Talisa came in to see what all the fussing was and started laughing at him, so he managed to get her up in his arms too, and carried them all over to the big fur-padded pen where the children played, and then lowered himself to his knees before he carefully tumbled them all out onto the furs squealing and rolled Talisa in his arms to kiss her, glad to hear the light-heartedness come back into her voice.

Before he’d left for the Wall, she’d teased him with mock threats of the punishment waiting on his return, and he’d pounced upon her and nuzzled in and just as teasingly promised to endure whatever sentence she decreed for him, grateful beyond measure to be able to laugh with her, together. But when he’d tried to make her his confession after coming back, in a like spirit, instead she’d nearly gone into a frenzy; she’d stopped his mouth with both hands and told him fiercely, “I don’t want to hear it! You’re home. You’re safe. I don’t care about anything else, I don’t!” He’d halted, surprised, and her face crumpled. “First the ravens didn’t come—then they sent word, from the Wall, that there hadn’t been any word from you, for a week—and then it was two, and three, and—”

She choked off into silence and covered her face, tears of remembered worry trickling from beneath her fingers. He’d lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed to hold her, instead, and when her ragged breathing had slowed, they’d only made love gently, stroking each other with hands, kissing and cuddling in together.

“You always won,” she said very softly, huddled against his chest. “I got used to it.”

“So did I,” he said, low and grim, stroking her hair.

He would far rather have taken any punishment she’d have contrived than feel how much worry and fear he’d given to her, and to all his family; Mother had more silver in her hair, and Sansa meanwhile had raised an entire second royal guard and her riding coats now had plates of armor sewn into the wool, as if she’d been making herself ready to be the defender of their house, because he’d nearly fallen and left them exposed. Even Nymeria wouldn’t chide him. “You’ve been punished enough for anything,” she said, almost to his dismay, although it turned out that what she meant was all the child minding that he’d gladly done.

He did his best to reassure Talisa, and was relieved to see her spirits ease. But from the day he arrived, in his own heart he was expecting to be called back to the Wall at any moment. Sam wrote him by raven once a week with a report of the state of things at Castle Black and the other reopened keeps, and whenever Robb opened the latest message, he was sure that it would tell him that the wights had been sighted again. But instead the Watch only kept sending out more and more scouts; Mance had sent Alliser nearly five hundred volunteers by now, and a few of them had even gone as far as Thenn country and returned with no sign of the wights.

They haven’t found anyone at all, Sam had written. As far as the scouts can tell, there’s no one left living north of the Wall. Lord Alliser thinks they’ve all been killed and turned into wights themselves. But we don’t know where they’ve gone. And still no sign of Jon, he added, as he did at the end of every letter.

It made Robb uneasy, for he didn’t understand it at all. They’d been unready and weak; the dead had overrun their encampment at the Milkwater easily, and the Wall had barely been manned at a single castle. The enemy should have come at them at once; if not at once, then at least before now, when each passing week made their defenses stronger. He couldn’t see why they’d have waited, and he’d already paid dearly once for his lack of understanding. Sam was searching urgently through all the annals of the Watch for everything he could turn up about the wights and the Walkers, but so far he’d found nothing to explain where or why they’d gone.

But if the wights had retreated so deep into the fastnesses of the far north, that did give Robb at least a temporary peace of mind: even the dead couldn’t cross such a distance in a day, and their defenses were growing stronger. When the white raven came to them from the Citadel to formally announce the beginning of winter, and the days at last stopped growing shorter, Robb began to slowly believe that he was home to stay, at least for a time, and even to think of making other plans. 

The tables in the Great Hall were soon dressed with cloths for Winterfair, and the luxurious smell of oranges stuck with cloves filled the air of the keep: Triarch Malaquo had sent an entire shipload of orange trees alive in pots for their glassgardens, along with an effusive formal letter greeting him as a kinsman and calling Talisa his beloved niece, and rejoicing in the industry and wisdom of his rule, by which Robb gathered that Volantis was prospering by the increased trade as much as they were.

“He’s also extremely grateful that you’ve been taking in so many refugees,” Sansa said, smirking a little with dry amusement. “After you made your bargain with the Wildlings, I wrote to him and all the other Free Cities and told them that we’d take the refugees off their hands in return for them paying their passage on Manderly’s ships at a silver a head, which costs them less than it does to manage them in their own cities for a month. Our traders keep half the money, and use the other half to buy grain in the Reach on their way back, to feed the settlements in the Gift. It’s good business for them: they’re taking bulkier goods out, furs and wool and seal meat, and bringing back spices and silk, so they have room to cram in the passengers and grain. And it means that more of the Essenes are arriving with some money left in their pockets.”

“Are they getting along with the Wildlings all right?” Robb asked. It was the one thing he’d worried about the most.

“Not in the least,” Sansa said, unperturbed. “The Wildlings think they’re all useless babies, and the Essenes think the Wildlings are all hopeless savages. It couldn’t be better. We look much more reasonable to both of them, so they’re coming to us to complain and settle quarrels. And I’ve told Mance that anyone who gets into a fight with blades drawn should be put to death or sent straight to take the black, both sides, no excuses, and he’s agreed. So they’re fumbling along together.”

She’d kept the kingdom well in hand, the whole time he’d been gone, and she’d even begun a correspondence with Lady Olenna Tyrell and Tyrion Lannister, she told him. “It’s better for us to be talking to them than not,” she said. “We can’t trust anything they say, but at least we’ll know what they want us to think about what’s going on in the south. They finally got Storm’s End,” she added.

“Stannis has been killed?” Robb said.

“No,” Sansa said, with a small snort of malicious pleasure. “The day before they were going to make their final assault, he broke out with almost his entire garrison and even took Ser Lancel Lannister hostage on his way out. He’s retreated to Dragonstone.” Robb laughed himself, sharing the malice and the pleasure both.

When at last he began to truly believe himself home to stay, at least for a while, they talked a long while together about the needs of the kingdom, and the future. Sansa had made lists of their bannermen, with notes upon many of them; she’d marked which ones were richer, which ones had more men or more land, which had ambitions, which ones had eligible sons and daughters.

“We need to balance all these men against each other,” Sansa said. “If any one house grows too powerful, we need to find some way to rein them in. If any grows too weak, we need to strengthen them, or ease them out of power. And we have to keep an eye on their loyalties, and make sure we know about it if any of them make ties to the south.”

“Do you truly think we still need to look at our bannermen with such concern?” Robb said, dismayed.

“Of course,” Sansa said. “You quieted them all down after you killed Bolton. But they won’t stay quiet forever. And making the North richer is a double-edged sword. Men who don’t need to worry about starving in winter can think up plots instead.”

She had another long list of plans she wanted him to approve. Among them, she’d found a husband for Walda—or rather, two halves of one. “Great-uncle Brynden’s agreed to stay in the North and marry her, and be Lord Protector of the Dreadfort until Bert’s old enough to hold the keep,” Sansa said.

Robb stared at her. “The Blackfish agreed to marry?” he said incredulously. “He left home for thirty years because he wouldn’t marry when Grandfather Hoster wanted him to!”

“Grandfather wanted him to father children,” Sansa said dryly. “I promised him you’d do that part for him.”

“What?” Robb said, although it was more a squawk.

“Walda wants more children, but she can’t have them without a husband,” Sansa said. “But if she marries a man who fathers his own children on her, I wouldn’t give a rusted nail for Bert’s life, or for keeping the Dreadfort loyal. And this way, we’ll have the Blackfish here to help us if you have to go to war again, either against the Lannisters or the wights. It’s all right with Talisa,” she added. “She understands.”

“Oh does she!” Robb said, indignant. “I’m glad you’ve arranged with everyone else for me to provide stud services!”

“You’ve done it too often to complain now,” Sansa said, without the slightest remorse.

He admitted to himself he couldn’t really, the next day after Walda had lured him hopefully into her chambers, a lavish suite she’d fitted with a canopied bed draped in velvet curtains, with three silken featherbeds upon it. She put him on his back and rode him vigorously, her breasts filling his hands and his hips rising to meet her, both of them gasping with pleasure, and afterwards she rang for the servants and fed him from a tray heaped with small crisp pastries and warm hand pies, and a pot of the Volantene spiced tea, which he could gladly have drunk by the vat.

“But are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a true husband of your own?” he said, feeling guilty and spoiled, sprawled on his back upon the rug before the hearth. He felt even more indulged because he and Talisa were still being careful, and he meant to keep being careful this time, until Wendel was at least a year old.

“Oh, no!” Walda said comfortably, stretched out on her belly next to him and licking sugar from her fingers. “I’m happy to share with Tali,” which was the same way that Talisa had put it herself.

“You’re certain you don’t mind?” he’d asked her the night before, a little stifled.

But she’d only shaken her head, earnestly. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’ve been dreading Walda getting married again and going away. I knew she didn’t want to leave us either, and what would we do about Bert? But it also wasn’t fair to ask her to stay with us and just give up having a husband and more children of her own. I love her; I want her to be happy, too. I couldn’t see any way out until Sansa suggested it. I don’t mind sharing you with her.”  

So he had two wives now: it seemed he had to keep his promise to Walder Frey after all. Even Nymeria was pleased instead of angry: it meant she got Talisa to herself more often, and she didn’t even mind anymore that to the world, she was his third wife, rather than Talisa’s. In the evenings their growing family filled the great sitting room with warmth and laughing noise, and Robb looked through the room and let himself feel as though perhaps he’d truly found a way to mend something priceless and broken, even with the lingering empty spaces in the dark corners.

Chapter Text

It was only a short time after Winterfair when the guards on the gate tower sent to let him know that a single rider, without any banner, was coming to the keep, a strange thing with winter’s grip closing tight upon the North. Robb went up himself to have a look, and after a few minutes of all of them squinting together, one of the guards said suddenly, “Is that a woman?” in a doubtful tone, and Robb flinched as he realized all at once who it was. Then he went back to the keep slowly to tell Mother that Brienne of Tarth was coming to Winterfell—and that she was coming alone.

Mother waited in the courtyard with him, her hands clasped tight in clenched misery, as Lady Brienne rode in through the opened gates; having dismounted, she came towards them and bowed to them both. “Your Grace, my lady,” she said.

But for once, Mother hadn’t the patience for even the smallest part of formality. She reached out and took Brienne’s mailed hands in her own. “Tell me,” she said, low and ragged.

Robb was braced for the news himself. He’d told Mother what Brienne of Tarth had gone to do, when he’d learned of it, and she’d bent her head and nodded in silence. They hadn’t spoken of it since: not that Brienne had gone to try, and not that they’d heard nothing back from her, all this time. But now she was here, and she was alone, and there seemed only one reason why she’d have come.

But instead Brienne hesitated, and then said slowly, “My lady, it’s not a—simple thing to tell. Lady Arya is alive,” she added, and Mother let out a choked gasp and turned away to burst into tears; Robb took her in his arms and looked at Brienne, his own heart pounding, and grated out, “The Lannisters have her? Or—?”

But Brienne’s face was drawn with unease and also weariness, and he thought of how she’d come: riding steadily, and not at a fast pace; she’d not sent a raven on ahead from somewhere else. She’d come, in person, to a place where she couldn’t have been certain of her welcome—to tell them something that wasn’t simple, of what had happened to his sister. “Is there anything to be done quickly?” Robb forced himself to say, and she shook her head.

“I’d have done it, or tried, your Grace,” she said, and he believed her, too well.

“Then you’ll go and refresh yourself, and have something to eat,” Robb said. “And then you’ll tell us what news you have.”

When they’d gathered, though, in the sitting room, with Sansa and Rickon and Maester Luwin there to hear the news first, Brienne was silent for several moments, as if she couldn’t find her way into her own story. Sansa said finally, “If it’s complicated, start at the beginning, and take us through. How did you start looking for Arya?”

Brienne gave her a quick nod, decisive, and began in on it. “I guessed that she’d got out of Kings Landing,” she said. “I thought if she hadn’t, either she was dead or the Lannisters would have found her, and I didn’t believe Ser Jaime would have kept her concealed from me,” which was more trust than Robb would have given the man, but he remembered Jaime asking after her, in that grudging and half-resentful way, as though he knew very well he owed a debt he hadn’t paid: perhaps Lannister wouldn’t have lied to her, after all.

“And if she had made it out,” Brienne continued, “I thought she’d have been trying to get north, to Riverrun or maybe the Eyrie. So I just went along the Kingsroad and asked for a well-spoken, dark haired boy or girl, anywhere that I thought she might have stopped. I asked the women,” she added. “I thought they’d be more likely to remember a child that young traveling alone, and in the kitchens: I thought she might have asked to do work in exchange for some bread. And at the crossroads inn, when I asked in the back, I noticed that one of the other servants, a boy of that age who was helping with the baking, was listening to me ask questions, and he looked uneasy. I stopped him outside after when he went for water, and told him who I was and why I was searching, and persuaded him to tell me what he knew.”

What the boy had known wasn’t a pleasant story to hear, and worse because it turned out that they’d already had some of it from another direction. When Lord Alliser had first written to ask Robb for more men, he’d said that a recruiter for the Night’s Watch, a man named Yoren, had been killed by goldcloaks in the crownlands, for no reason that he knew, and no more recruits had come from the south since.

“I remember Yoren,” Sansa said, tensely. “He came to the Tower of the Hand, to ask Father for men for the Watch. He had dinner with us there.”

“Hotpie was one of his recruits,” Brienne said. “He said that Arya was with them as well, disguised as a boy. After Yoren was killed, the goldcloaks took them all prisoner to the Lannister camp at Harrenhal,” and at the name, Mother’s hand clenched on Robb’s with dreadful force.

Brienne was sparing with the details, except to tell them briefly that another of the recruits, an older boy named Gendry that Arya had befriended, had been killed there. But she couldn’t spare their feelings, for they already knew too much about the horrors that had gone forward in those walls, under the command of the Mountain. Robb still remembered with a sickening knot in his gorge the grotesque slaughter they’d found when they’d ridden in through the gates: hundreds of helpless prisoners, most of them ordinary smallfolk who’d surely had no part in the war at all, put to death by torment.

“Arya took Hotpie out with her when she escaped from the keep,” Brienne said. “He told me that they had the help of a man from Braavos, a murderer. Arya had saved him from burning to death in a gaol wagon, so he considered himself in her debt. Hotpie told me…” she hesitated briefly, “that the man could change his face. I didn’t know whether to believe him.

“Not long after, they were taken in the countryside by the Brotherhood Without Banners, and separated,” Brienne went on. “But Hotpie told me that they’d intended to ransom Arya to you. And it did seem to me that anyone in Westeros who’d taken her would have sold her, to you or to the Lannisters, and either way, she’d have been found. And by then, I knew she hadn’t been. So I thought that maybe she’d escaped them and gone to Braavos. Hotpie said that the man had told her she could come to him there, and given her a token for passage. And we have regular trade with Braavos, from Tarth. So I went home and took ship there from Tarth Harbor, with one of our traders. He introduced me to several local merchants in the city, so I could ask them for help.”

From there, her story grew only more strange. She told them of asking questions uselessly, getting only shrugs back. “But then in desperation, I mentioned the story that the man could change his face,” Brienne said. “And as soon as I did that…everything changed. The men I’d spoken to had wanted to help me before, in a small way; they just didn’t know anything useful. But after I mentioned the man, they wouldn’t say anything at all. They all looked afraid. The most sympathetic one, a man who had young children of his own, told me very quietly that the girl I was looking for was surely dead, and I should stop my search and go home. And none of them would talk to me anymore at all.”

She’d spent months more asking questions in the city and searching, and then one day some of the city guards had come and formally escorted her onto a ship for Tarth and sent her away, she told them. “I came back a few months later by the next ship I could get, and was sent away again after another few months of asking. I was sure by then that Arya had to be there. If she wasn’t, they wouldn’t have cared that I was asking.”

She looked at Mother. “I know I could have written to ask your help. But I also thought…I thought by then that it was for me to find her. The way that they refused to answer felt like a challenge. As though I had to prove to them that I would have the answer, and I wouldn’t let them push me off. Maybe if I’d come back to you then…” She shook her head.

“What else could we have done, when the whole city was against you?” Robb said. “I couldn’t storm Braavos with an army and expect to get her out.”

“You had already learned more than all the rest of the world,” Mother said, agreeing, but with a tense edge in her voice. “You went back again?”

“Yes,” Brienne said. “It was harder the third time: none of the Braavosi merchants would take me, and even my father’s traders begged me not to make them take me, for they said they wouldn’t be let into the harbor. Finally I started asking the captains of Northern ships to help me, when they stopped in Tarth Harbor on the way back from Volantis. I had to tell them that they might not be allowed into the harbor, if they took me, and most of them refused, but one day a ship came in, and the captain had served with you in the war. He remembered me having taken away Ser Jaime, and not only told me he wouldn’t help me, he upbraided me for treachery,” she added, a little wry, “so I knew he was a loyal man, and I told him why I was trying to get to Braavos. Then he took me, and he got me off his ship into the city hidden in a crate. And the next day, when I went back into the market, to ask questions…” Brienne stopped, a strange hesitation coming over her, and then she said, “Arya was there.”

“There?” Mother said, bursting out, and Robb was staring at her.

Brienne hesitated again. “I don’t know how to tell you any of this,” she said at last, low. “I can tell you what happened, but it’s not… Yes, my lady. She was there. She was…she was begging in the market. And…she was blind.”

“What?” Robb said, thick with horror, but Brienne looked at him helplessly and shook her head.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “She…I went around the market asking everyone about her, the way I had before: a Westerosi girl, dark of hair, grey of eyes, fair of skin, well-spoken. I went to every stall, and all of them refused to say anything to me, or ordered me off, and then I started asking the beggars, and after I’d asked every last one, and I went to the stairs to leave the market and start going to the temples again, she was sitting with her begging bowl by the stairs. She hadn’t been there a moment before. I’d seen and asked every beggar I could find. And she shouldn’t have been able to see me. Her eyes were filmed over white. But as I came past, she asked me in clear accents, well-spoken, if I could spare a coin. She spoke to me in the Westerosi dialect of the common speech, even though we were both in Braavos, and I looked at her—a young woman, dark of hair, fair of skin—and somehow I knew it was her.”

“May the Mother have mercy,” Mother said, her voice breaking; tears were running down her face. “But then—she wasn’t a prisoner? She—” Robb pressed her hand, and she fell silent.

“I spoke with her,” Brienne said. “I told her I was looking for Arya Stark. She said that there was no one named Arya Stark in Braavos. I asked her who she was, and she said, ‘No one.’ So I was sure, then. I told her I’d come to take her home to you, I told her who I was, and how I’d come to be looking for her. She only said I should go home. I thought perhaps she didn’t want you to see her blind. I tried to persuade her to come anyway, but she didn’t answer at all, and then…I told her that I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t go home to her kin, or what had happened to her, but I had vowed to bring your daughters back to you, and so I would do that, and trust that you would know better how to help her than I could. And I tried to take her arm, and take her away with me.”

“And they stopped you,” Robb said flatly.

Brienne looked at him, her face gone strange. “She stopped me, your Grace.”

“What?” Mother said.

“I reached for her arm, and I missed,” Brienne said. “I tried again, and again, and I couldn’t get hold of her. I can’t tell you how she did it. It almost didn’t seem as though she’d moved. She just…wasn’t where I was reaching. After I missed three times, I tried to just grab her bodily with both hands, and I nearly fell on my face in the street. When I caught myself, she was standing behind me, still holding the begging bowl. And then…a moment later, she was just gone. I don’t know how. Someone walked between us for an instant maybe, or I blinked, and just like that she’d vanished. I searched the whole market and didn’t find a trace of her; I walked through all the streets around it. No one would admit to having seen her at all.”

It was an incredible story, but Brienne spoke with such intense frustration that Robb believed every word of it: he could see her doggedly going up and down every lane of the market, trying to find a shadow.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I should have found a way to persuade her to come.”

“And that was the last you saw of her?” Mother asked, and Brienne hesitated again, but in a different way this time: not as though she didn’t know how to answer, but didn’t much want to.

But after a moment, she said reluctantly, “I…I did see her once more. I went back to the market the next day, at the same time, and asked everyone again. And when I’d asked everyone, I went back to the stairs, and she was there once more. I asked her again to come home with me. I thought perhaps…it was another challenge. I told her I wasn’t going to give up. I’d given my word, and I meant to see it through. I meant to get Arya Stark back safe to her mother.

“She told me that I didn’t have a right to give a vow for someone else. I could promise for myself, but not for Arya. I had to admit that was true, but then I said that Arya’s mother had asked it of me, and you did have a right to expect her to come home to you, if she had the chance. She said that you didn’t, not any more, and…I asked her why.”

Brienne paused a long moment, her face drawn, and she wouldn’t meet their eyes; Robb almost felt a heavy cold hand gripping him by the back of the neck. “And?” he said harshly.

Brienne was silent, and then she said, low, “Because you made peace with the Lannisters. And gave up vengeance for Eddard Stark,” and it was a cold hand upon him, holding him still to receive a blow across his face, without even the chance to recoil.

#

“She’s gone mad, Robb,” Talisa tried to tell him, softly, her hands upon his shoulders as he sat looking into the fire, that night. But that wasn’t true, or if it was, it was a madness Arya had a right to have. An honorable madness. She’d been there at the Sept of Baelor. She’d heard the sword swing; she’d heard their father die, murdered at Joffrey’s command. She’d escaped out of Lannister hands and fled at risk of her life, a girl all alone, when she could have surrendered safely. She’d not revealed herself to their enemies even while prisoners around her had been being tortured to death before her face. She’d kept on trying to get back to them with all her strength, with the greatest courage, in every way she could—until she’d heard that he’d given up, that he’d surrendered. And then she’d gone abroad to Braavos and handed herself over to some monstrous cult, worshipers of the god of death, so she could keep trying to avenge their father. Because she was the only one left to do it.

He didn’t know how to bear the reproach of it. It was too justly earned. Their father had been abused and murdered. His killer lived, and sat upon the Iron Throne in luxury and pomp, and Robb—Robb had sat at table with him, at a feast, and the closest thing to vengeance that he’d taken was to fuck Joffrey’s wife in secret. He’d pledged to defend Joffrey’s realm against attack. It wasn’t any comfort that his bannermen and even the rest of his family had wanted him to do it. Who else was it for to avenge his father, if not his eldest son? His mother, his sister, his wife, might tell him to make peace; his little brother was still a boy. His heart should have forbidden it. His honor. But he’d traded in his blood debt for a crown instead, and he’d given all he was to keeping it.

He went to bed with Talisa after the fire died down, at her pleading, but after she was asleep herself, he rose again, and dressed, and silently went out with Grey Wind padding at his heels. He didn’t go out through the gates. He went to the godswood and over the back wall and into the cold midnight silence of the Wolfswood, and ran as if he could escape his own thoughts if he only went fast enough. He didn’t know how long he ran, or where; he only kept going until he came to himself tearing into a freshly killed deer at Grey Wind’s side, blood and raw meat in his mouth, under his fingernails. He couldn’t stop eating even long enough to build a fire and cook it; his stomach was a knot of starving pain. There was a pale light in the air that was sunset, not sunrise. Rickon and Shaggy found them there while they were still eating, and joined in without hesitation; when they’d stripped the carcass down to bones, Rickon licked his fingers and said, “Mother was worried,” unconcernedly himself.

Robb went back with him to Winterfell and to the baths, the water blood-red and cloudy around him, and after he’d scrubbed clean, he went back upstairs to the small room further up in the north tower that he’d added to the royal suite, to sleep in when he wanted to let Talisa and Nymeria have a night alone, without exciting gossip. He hadn’t used it since coming back from the Wall; he’d been too busy taking pleasure in Walda’s bed—with the woman who ought to have been his wife, if he’d kept his word to her father, or where he shouldn’t have been at all, if he’d kept his word to the woman he’d married. But he’d found that too hard as well. How could he expect any greater honor from himself, when he couldn’t manage even such a small thing as to be satisfied with one loving and generous woman?

He slept, and went out running again when he awoke, and did the same thing again after he’d come back from that, and then after the third time, when he came back upstairs from the baths, he found Sansa waiting for him in the little room, sitting on the bed.

“Do you want to take the Iron Throne?” she said, without preamble. “We can raise thirty thousand men; Dorne will give us another thirty. The Lannisters and the Tyrells will have twice that many. That’s not enough to beat you. You can take King’s Landing and cut Joffrey’s head off in the square in front of the Sept of Baelor, just like he did to Father. But that’s the only thing you can do, and you couldn’t have done it when you made the peace. You didn’t have enough men. And even if you do it, and leave Winterfell and the North to be King of the Seven Kingdoms instead, Father will still be dead.”

Robb flinched in the doorway, and Sansa stood up facing him. “I was there, too,” she said. “I was sitting next to Joffrey, in a beautiful gown, with my hair up and the golden necklace he’d given me around my neck, smiling up at him, while he condemned our father to die. And the next morning, he took me up to the walls and made me look at Father’s head. He’d had it mounted on a spike. Next to Septa Mordane, and Hansel, and Coren, and all our other household guards. He told me he’d give me your head, next. And then,” she went on, level, “he turned his back on me. He was as close as you are now. I could have shoved him right off the wall. I almost did. But Sandor Clegane stopped me. And he was right to stop me.

“Father didn’t want to be avenged. He wanted to keep us safe. He made that confession before the Sept to protect me and Arya, and he lied and dishonored himself to do it. He sent Yoren to Arya to get her home. He lied to protect Jon all our lives. And if he was here, he’d tell you what Sandor told me.” She reached out and took his hands in hers and looked him in his face; she’d grown tall, as tall as he was. “Live,” she said softly. “Live, Robb.”

She said it, and he knew she meant it, but then her face crumpled, folding in on itself with pain. He put his arms around her and she wrapped hers around him, and they wept together, sinking into a heap on the bare cold floor of the room, with snow blowing in from the narrow window high up in the wall that let in only a little light.

#

He made himself do the work that Sansa found for him, the next several days, and only went running with Rickon in the mornings. He still felt cold and distant and bleak, far from himself and the world. Then Old Nan and Mother arranged a conspiracy with her and Talisa and Walda, and all of them suddenly came down with a little feverish cold, along with the royal nurses, so there was no one to look after the children but him and Nymeria, which was to say him.

He’d thought he liked to mind them, but he hadn’t ever minded all four of them alone for so much as a day, much less for three unbroken days and nights with only Wendel’s wet nurse to help at all, who had her own baby to look after, too. He would have gone down to the lower hall to recruit some of the women there to help him, but Mother put on a show of being anxious about letting someone so unvetted look after the royal children, and they all kept insisting they would surely be well very soon if he could only manage a little longer.

It was a good cure, although a brutal one; when they decided it was enough and came back, he was so tired he docilely followed Walda to her bed and fell into it and slept until noon, and when he woke with a heaped tray full of all his favorite foods waiting, he devoured it to the crumbs and was glad to let her kiss him and have him, drawing him back inside his own skin again.

He knew Sansa was right: he wasn’t going to take the Iron Throne, and make himself and his children into southerners, so there wasn’t anything else for him to do. He wasn’t going to ride south and challenge Joffrey to single combat at the gates of the Red Keep. He wasn’t going to turn assassin and find some way to murder him, and he didn’t want Arya to do that, either. He wanted her to live, too. He wanted her to come home, and try to be well and happy, as he’d done himself. It was only hard to believe that he had the right to do it and still think himself a man of honor, when his little sister had refused to do the same.

He did his best not to dwell upon it in his thoughts again, wary of the deep despond catching him once more. But the doubt was still lurking deep in him when he left on progress again, several months later. He wasn’t certain he could call it his duty to Walda, but whatever it was, he’d done it, and her belly was growing rapidly, and he was certain that he and Talisa weren’t going to be able to restrain themselves for much longer if he stayed. She’d tried to take moon tea, but all six varieties that she’d been able to track down made her sick when she’d tried them, and though Wendel was almost a year old now, Robb still felt she ought to have more time. Old Nan had lectured him up and down about not giving his poor wife a proper rest.

He took Rickon with him, planning to spend the next six months visiting the northwest keeps starting from Deepwood Motte: he thought Rickon would like running together through the Wolfswood as they came south, and looked forward to it himself. But they traveled by sea to Bear Island to begin their circuit, and there Maege Mormont introduced them to her little heir Lyanna, a girl as fierce as bears herself even though she scarcely topped the buckle on his belt. Lyanna and Rickon were gone off into the woods together before the royal company were even housed, and they came back long after everyone else had eaten dinner, filthy and dragging an elk that they’d killed together, with Shaggy and their bows, both of them glowing with joy beneath the dirt and blood.

“I’m going to help her find an orphaned cub,” Rickon said that night, in Robb’s sitting room, after telling him about the mountains, the glorious hunting, and then he paused and said, a little anxiously, “Robb—I can stay, can’t I?”

“What?” Robb said.

“With Lyanna,” Rickon said. “We promised, today, in the woods. The elk led us to a heart tree before it died, so we knew the gods were listening, and we went ahead. But I told her I might have to finish the progress first. But I don’t, do I?”

Robb stared at him helplessly. “Rickon, she’s ten! And you’re eleven!”

Rickon only shrugged. “We don’t want to make babies yet. But we still know. I’m sorry,” he added. “I know you wanted me to study, and help Brandon, and I’ve tried. But I can’t. It’ll have to be Sansa, not me. Anyway now there’s Wendel. You can let me and Shaggy go, can’t you?”

It was the longest speech Rickon had made him since coming back, and it was too plainly a desperate plea for freedom, to be let out of a prison of stone walls and letters. Half unwillingly Robb saw it at once. Rickon would run joyful and unfettered with Shaggy in the deep thick forested slopes of the island, and he’d grow a wild thing again, glad to put aside the ill-fitting labor of study and rule, which he wanted still less the more of it he got. Instead he’d help Lyanna Mormont to make Bear Island into a bastion of ferocious strength, guarding the northern border of the realm against future threats from the far North.

Robb half hoped that Maege might protest that Lyanna was too young, but she was only relieved, the next day, when he spoke to her. “I took half her hide off with my tongue last night, after she told me what they’d done, but if you give the match your blessing, I won’t deny that it’s a weight taken off my mind. I didn’t know how I’d ever find her a husband who wouldn’t try to put a leash upon her,” she said; they were watching together from a tower window as the two little dark figures went roaming away over the thick snow with Shaggy bounding alongside, and vanished into the woods again, before the sun had even come up all the way.

Robb tried to be glad for Rickon’s happiness, and he was, but it was a painful wrench to board the ship and leave him behind. He hardly knew what Mother would say to him when he came back alone. He hadn’t sent her a raven; he’d tell her only when he was home, and had any chance of explaining it at all, but he wondered how he’d do it.

He’d gone to war to save his family, but he began to feel that he’d failed them all. He hadn’t defeated the Lannisters quick enough, so Father had been put to death. He hadn’t freed Sansa; Mother had done that, when she’d set Jaime Lannister loose. Arya had escaped on her own and turned her face from him in disgust, because he’d made peace with their father’s murderers, and Bran and Jon had vanished into the far north to be slaughtered by wights while he’d been adventuring like a fool in the south. And he’d come back too late even for Rickon, too late to make him the prince he should have been. Osha and Lady Umber had saved his life, but Robb had abandoned him without the hand of a man upon him; Rickon had been left to raise himself as best he could, and he’d grown too wild to endure the walls of a keep and the boundaries of a court.

The weight of failure left Robb feeling bereft, a cold heaviness made worse by the short days and riding so alone. He’d taken younger recruits with him on the progress deliberately, to give them some more seasoning and harden them up, but they gazed at him with something more like worship than mere admiration, and his inward bitterness made that feel like mere foolishness on their part. And even the veterans among his guard were too determined to show him honor, these days. They took pleasure in feeling themselves entrusted with the life of the king, and none of them wanted him to take off the crown at all. They no longer thought of themselves as his friends and companions, the way that his honor guard once had, back when he’d first ridden to war, a boy foolish enough to imagine that the gods would be merciful to him and his family, if only he had courage.

He set a hard pace for his company and spent a great deal of time in drill, trying to armor himself with work and activity against the lurking shadow at the edge of his thoughts. When it grew too thick and close, he slipped out of his own camp at night to go run with Grey Wind deep in the forest, and often had a struggle to force himself to circle back again before morning.

In Deepwood Motte, Lord Glover held a great hunt to celebrate his coming, and made a contest of it: each lord and knight would go out separately into the Wolfswood, with one of his huntsmen to be a guide, to see who could bring in the most game in three days. “You just want us to stock your kitchens for you, is that it?” Robb said, with an effort at mock indignation, knowing it was expected of him, and Glover said in equally mock protest, “Have mercy on a poor man, your Grace! It’s hard to have this many more mouths to feed,” before the whole company laughed, and Robb forced a laugh of his own that felt like a lie in his mouth.

But he was glad to go out into the deep thick silence of the Wolfswood again, with so good an excuse to leave all of his company behind; he even left his guard behind again, over their protests and the one he knew Sansa would have made if she’d known about it, and only took Grey Wind along.

But by the end of the first hour he was annoyed in the other direction by his guide Huor, a man who might have been pure stock of the First Men with a drop of giant’s blood stirred in, dark of hair and eye, more silent than the trees and as broad as an oak, whom Glover had said was his finest hunter. It was surely true: Robb couldn’t so much as sight a deer before the man had already shot it down with a single arrow from his enormous longbow. The third time he did it, Robb glared down at him. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

Huor looked up at him as unmoved as he’d been the whole time since their introduction. The two other deer were slung into a great sack on his shoulder, and the weight didn’t seem to trouble him at all. “Yes,” he said.

Robb stared at him, surprised by the too-honest answer. “That doesn’t seem very sensible, does it?” Huor only stared back as if to say it seemed sensible enough to him, or he wouldn’t be doing it. “All right, why?” Robb asked.

“To get it out of the way,” Huor said.

“We’re to be out in the woods for three days,” Robb said. “Did you have something else in mind to do?”

“Yes,” Huor said, and went to get the third deer without any more explanation; by then Robb was becoming more curious than angry, and he was ready to get down from his horse and follow when Huor led the way deeper into the forest and went into a small cottage, after hanging the deer in the trees nearby.

It was a simple place at first glance: a single room, a bed, a table, a rocking chair, a cupboard, a few pegs on the wall, all of them simple themselves. But all the things had been made with such care that they were beautiful, the wood made smooth and carefully shaped and polished to a glowing gloss, and the whole room together felt purposeful and deliberate, the work of skilled hands and clear eyes and deep patience, a place full of a peace and wholeness that felt so far distant to Robb that it made his eyes prickle and his throat tight. 

When Huor finished stirring up the fire, he stood up and looked at him. Robb stared at him, and Grey Wind padded over and curled up on the sheepskin by the fire to sleep, and Huor silently came to him and began to undress him. Robb didn’t stop him. He didn’t help him either; he felt strange and half-sick to his stomach, as if he’d swallowed poison and was only noticing it now. He stood still and let Huor carefully take off his arms and his clothes, and when Huor said, “Lie down,” he went and lay down on the bed, on his belly. Huor silently and carefully made him ready for a long time, and then undressed himself and got on him and said, “Breathe out,” and put his enormous cock straight into him in a single steady pressing stroke that lasted just as long as Robb’s breath, and when Robb drew in the next he was filled, his whole body made aware and shaped to the huge hard length of him.

Huor lay fully down on him, covered him, and took Robb’s hands and stretched them gently over his head. He only lay there like that, his cock and his body pressing in, almost crushing, and Robb felt a kind of shaking start in him, or maybe it was a shaking that had been in him for years, a boy’s trembling hand that he’d only made still by clenching it into a fist, and as he let it go, it started trying to shake his whole body, and it couldn’t; he couldn’t tremble at all, pressed down, covered, safe.

He didn’t know how long the inward shaking lasted; a long time, but at least it wasn’t eight years, eight years of war and blood and death and terror, before it finally passed out of him utterly, his whole body easing, and then Huor lifted off him a little and knelt up, bringing Robb’s hips up and keeping them joined. He stayed there while Robb’s whole body filled instead with a glow of lust like embers gently being breathed on, and when at last they caught and he shuddered all over, Huor started to fuck him thoroughly, each long stroke going all the way to the end, smooth and steady and irresistible. He spent inside him, and then waited there until his cock softened and came out, and then he gently eased Robb back down flat, and got up, and brought a warm damp cloth and wiped him clean, and covered him, and Robb slept at once.

He woke some hours later. Huor gave him a bowl of stew, rich and savory, and a wooden cup of cold clear water, and afterwards took the dishes outside in a small tub and returned with the washing-up done and came back to bed and lay down beside him, his arm wrapped over him, his body a sheltering wall between him and the world, and they went to sleep again. In the morning, Huor had laid out Robb’s shirt and trousers and boots by the bed, with a heavy fur cloak to put on, and after Robb dressed, Huor took him a short way through the woods to a small steaming hot spring in a cave. They bathed together, and then Huor sat up on the far stone ledge and lifted him out of the water by the waist and pulled him firmly down onto his cock.

Robb groaned out softly and then relaxed against him, in the circle of his great arms and broad chest, his legs draped over Huor’s thighs, and Huor settled back against the wall behind him and just held him there, stroking his cock a little now and again with his great callused hand, the warm steam rising and drifting gently in clouds around their bodies, the snowy forest outside framed in the cave mouth as still and quiet as a dream. A small bird landed for a moment to sip snowmelt at the cave’s edge; a deer came by and did the same before carefully picking its way onward; a pair of snow-white rabbits went past, and a little while later a white fox, carrying what might have been one of them in its jaws, trotted by in the other direction.

Huor eventually tipped him forward onto the edge of the pool and fucked him, a few quick workmanlike strokes before he came. They washed off again and dressed and went back to the cottage to eat, and afterwards they went back to bed; Robb lay down on his back and Huor lifted his legs up and fucked him hard and fast for a long time, looking down at him the whole time with his dark deep eyes: the same way he’d looked at the creatures of the forest making their way through the world, each acting in their own nature, without judgement, and Robb gasped and crested suddenly, pleasure flowing through him, and went utterly limp beneath the pounding, all thought falling away, like a narrow encircling wall broken open to let him out.

The next morning he was glad to stay curled up in the furs and sleep for hours more, an animal in a winter den. Huor went out for a while and came back with some foraged greens and a rabbit from a snare that he dressed quickly and put in a pot to cook with some potatoes from a sack in the cupboard. He undressed and came back to bed, and Robb roused drowsily and put his arms around him and kissed him and drew him down to lie full-length on top of him. Huor used his own legs to press Robb’s thighs together around his cock, and then he eased his full weight down slowly upon him. Robb sighed out deeply, shuddering a little with the even stronger sensation of being borne down, his cock pressed firmly between their bellies, panting for breath while Huor gently thrust back and forth between his thighs.

After they ate, Huor took him back to the hot springs. They soaked in the hottest part they could bear and then went outside and rolled in the snow with their bodies steaming until they cooled off, and then they did it all over again, and the last time they fucked in the snow instead, and then went in once more to bathe before they dressed.

The next morning, Huor helped Robb back into his armor, and before Robb stepped out of the cottage, he turned and kissed Huor once more, softly, on the mouth, and said, “Thank you.”

Huor just nodded. He went and took the respectable three deer from the tree and silently led the way back to the Motte. “Only three!” Lord Glover said, pretending shock, and Robb grinned back with the wholehearted amusement he’d only counterfeited before, suddenly feeling the true warmth of welcome in his host’s broad teasing, in the rich smells of roasting meat and hot wine coming from the great vaulted hall, rebuilt and freshly painted since the war. His own banners had been put in pride of place on either side of the great doors, proclaiming the king’s presence: the king that Glover had left his own home and family to follow and to crown, not because he’d been chained to it by something unbreakable, but a choice he’d made and kept making, through all the long years since they’d first marched south together. “Oh, your huntsman found me game enough,” Robb said. “But I didn’t want to empty your woods in winter!”

He looked at Huor with warm gratitude one more time; Huor nodded to him with a smiling in the deep eyes, and silently turned away again and went back into the forest, following his own path. And Robb turned back to his own and went into the hall to take his place at the head of the high table, of the kingdom, gathering up all the reins of power into his hands again, easily and with satisfaction; he felt as though he’d been loosened up mind and body both, like a good massage after a hard day’s drill, to make him ready for more work.

Chapter Text

He returned to Winterfell just before the deep winter storms rolled in, having made peace with Rickon’s absence, and he managed to help Mother do so as well more easily than he’d feared: she’d recognized herself that Rickon was too restless at heart to be happy in the duty before him, and had needed to be let off his leash. It helped her, Robb thought, that Brandon and Bert were now three years of age—the age Rickon himself had been when the royal party had first come to Winterfell, all those years ago, to begin the overturning of their peace.

And Walda had just given him another daughter. They named her Brynda for the Blackfish: he came from the Dreadfort and held her at the tree for her naming with a bemused expression, and said to Robb wryly, “Your grandfather’s laughing down at me right now, I expect; he got his way in the end.” He was even a little gruffly pleased at the name, although he was quick to put her back in Walda’s arms afterwards, with a look of relief.

Travel within the North died down with the cold of a deep winter. The days still hadn’t begun to lengthen, although at least they weren’t growing shorter. The snows mounted up the walls of the keep, but the winter town was full of people and of life, grown to nearly five times the size Robb had ever seen it before. There were plays and dances, feasts and hunts, and Robb was happy to snug down in his warm and comfortable den for the season of dark.

In the south, the Lannisters were too busy squabbling with the Tyrells to make trouble for them, it seemed; or rather amongst themselves. Cersei Lannister had borne Loras a son, to the surprise of everyone—“Astonishingly, the boy looks just like him; I can’t account for it at all,” Lady Olenna had written to Sansa, in her dry way—and had schemed to persuade half a dozen lords on the northern border of the Stormlands, who’d been punished with heavy taxes by the crown in retribution for having supported Renly and Stannis, to swear their allegiance to Highgarden instead of Storm’s End, in exchange for the Tyrells paying their bills. In doing so, they’d given the Reach a foothold on the eastern coast and command over another thirty thousand fighting men, much to Lord Tywin’s fury.

Out of the desire not to raise our hopes, of course, Her Grace thought it best not to mention this charming arrangement to any of us before the whole pack of them were turning up to make their oaths to Mace, which—quite by chance, I’m sure—took place while I was in the capital visiting Margaery, Olenna had written. My wise and brilliant son was naturally delighted to publicly accept their allegiance at once, and even bought his daughter-in-law a set of emeralds in gold to thank her for her generous efforts on behalf of our family. The less said about the rest of my stay in King’s Landing, the better. While a circus of lions clawing at each another is certainly a remarkable spectacle, I cannot recommend being caught in the middle of it. Now we’ll have to find some other meat to throw to the old beast if we don’t want to end up savaged.

“Why isn't she pleased?” Robb said, frowning over the letter. “The Reach will do well out of it, surely.”

“Too well for Tywin to let it stand,” Sansa said. “Olenna’s going to have to make other concessions to him, or he’ll have to go after them outright. He’ll probably demand that they let the Westerlands take a dozen keeps between the goldroad and the roseroad—Tumbleton for sure, maybe even Bitterbridge. Rich growing land. And that’s going to make the Westerlands more self-sufficient, which isn’t really good for House Tyrell. But it’s all the better for us,” she added. “If Tywin’s spending the next five years securing the loyalties of those houses, he won’t be working on lords in the southern Riverlands instead.”

And there still hadn’t been any more sight of the wights in the lands beyond the Wall. The rest of the castles of the Watch had now been manned and stuffed with supply—thanks far more to Sam and to Mance Rayder than to Lord Alliser, but Robb was satisfied that the man had at least stayed out of the way—and in the Gift, the new holdfasts were prospering, with less quarreling even, as the Essenes with their centuries-long traditions of storytelling and music made more light of winter’s tedium for the Wildlings, and the two people began to mingle a little more, especially in one another’s beds.

It was the first time Robb had been home for an entire year since he’d gone to war in the south. It took a while before he stopped expecting to be called away, one month after another rolling away in almost bewildering peace. Talisa was eager to welcome him back to their bed, and he was deeply glad to be home to watch their next child grow between them from the first to the last, from the moment she knew the baby was coming, to the first time it kicked beneath their hands, and all the way to the birth, only six hours of labor this time, while a storm whipped snow past the windows. After the winds died down, he carried their third son to the tree in his own arms, breaking a path through the deep drifts for the others to follow him, and named him Tralago, after Talisa’s father, a name which no longer seemed so strange in the North, thanks to all the Essenes among them.

Robb had thought of naming him Eddard; he and Talisa had once talked of so naming their firstborn son. He’d wanted to, badly, but somehow he also couldn’t do it. He still wasn’t ready to give that name to another.

Not long after the naming, a false spring started: a solid month of days creeping longer until one morning they woke to the dripping sound all over the keep of a warm breeze melting the icicles upon the eaves, and Robb a little grudgingly went to give the bannermen of the Stony Shore their turn at hosting a royal progress, which Sansa told him they were demanding. “Why would they want me to come and eat their larders bare?” Robb said, mostly a whine at having to stir out of his own home.

“All our lords have money now,” Sansa said. “It’s worth it to them to host and to get your attention for their younger sons,” so he resignedly set off to be housed in a dozen drafty keeps along the western coast, some worse than Castle Black had been, and most of them with the entire populace of the nearest town crammed inside the walls for winter. And they hadn’t even left for the false spring, because they’d all wanted to be there for the royal visit.

The worst of them, Saltwave Tower, was more like an overgrown lighthouse than a keep, stuck out into the Sunset Sea at the end of a promontory that the tide covered for all but two hours of the day, and so cold even in the warmer weather that the entire household slept together sharing covers in the large round hall on the second floor above the kitchens. The only consolation was that Master Geddes and his wife Carissa invited him to share their own bed upstairs instead. Living out in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do had made them very inventive.

Even so, Robb was looking forward to reaching Castle Corben, the only great house of the North in the Stony Shore: he expected to find a warmer welcome there, and afterwards he’d be riding back towards home, instead of away from it. But they were still half a day’s ride away on the hardroad when Grey Wind whined at his heel, and Robb drew a breath full of the smell of snow. It was the late afternoon; the sun was going down and the sky was clear, without a cloud to be seen, but he said grimly, “We need shelter, quick.”

Master Geddes had sent a local man along to guide them to Castle Corben, who said dubiously, “There’s nowt near, your Grace, but Erron’s Hill.” They turned their horses onto a narrow track going up into the hard hills and went as fast as Robb dared to lead them in the growing dark. They reached the gates of the holdfast just as the storm cloud began blotting out the stars overhead, and the first flakes were whirling down as the household came to let them in.

Master Erron’s holdfast was dug entirely into the side of a great hill: the large wooden doors opened onto an enormous natural cave that was its stable, already full of goats, where they just managed to get all their horses squeezed in by putting all the tack under covers outside, and then they went through a narrow tunnel and came into a hall that was half a cave, and half dug out of earth.

It wasn’t a large place or a grand one, but they were welcomed with open arms, even though Robb had descended upon them with two hundred men, more than twice the number that ever lived in the place at all. But Erron’s household cleared out all the furniture and brought blankets and cushions to make the floor comfortable, and brought out enough food and drink to feast them all.

Master Erron looked to Castle Corben, and he was a loyal man, but he hadn’t come to the war in the south himself: he’d been too old, with seven daughters and a son born unexpectedly late and last who’d in turn been too young for the campaign at the Wall, by his father’s judgement if not his own. The boy, now twelve, was still deeply resentful of not having been allowed to go, and eager for tales of battle, begging for one after another from the veterans in Robb’s guard.

It was a strange muffled time in the thick fastness of the buried hold, with the wind outside a distant shriek of wild voices that came in through the small windows and sky-lights dug to the outside, like being in a fairy-story. They were all glad to spend their days gathered in the hall with their host, eating slices of enormous wheels of cheese out of the cellars, with dark brown bread and small tart apples, and drinking the strong old-fashioned mead his daughters brewed. Robb listened to his men telling stories of the wars and battles they’d fought, and half felt like a ghost eavesdropping on a history of his own life, made larger and more grand by time.

They’d given him the best sleeping chamber, a large room dug up into the wall that was nothing but an enormous bed, the floor heaped with straw mattresses and lush soft furs made fresh with sachets of pine needles. There was no fire, but the thick walls made it snug and close, and three round windows set in the wall, filled with tripled panes of glass, let in the ghostly white light of the storm outside whirling and wild.

Each night after the fires in the great hall had been banked, and a deep hush settled on the hold, a different one of the daughters crept into the room with him. The eldest, Amanthe, told him the first night that they’d decided it was only fair they each have a turn, in order of seniority, as long as the storm lasted, as if it were perfectly obvious that someone was going to have him, and the only thing that needed explaining was why they hadn’t let him pick for himself. “We’d be quarreling all winter about it otherwise,” she said, earnest and practical. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“I don’t at all,” Robb said, honestly, if a bit embarrassed at himself: it was outrageous and also even more like a fairy tale, getting to lie with all the daughters of the king under the mountain.

Amanthe smiled at him in relief and then came burrowing under the covers before she took off her clothes: she was a widow of thirty, with two children. She sighed with pleasure afterwards and said she was glad to have a man again, a little wistful. “Shall I give you a husband?” Robb said thoughtfully. “I’ve some good veterans with me who would be glad to retire and have a wife, and who could have the training of your brother and your sons. You could talk to them while we’re here, and have your pick.” She beamed at him in delight, and fucked him again for thanks.

It wasn’t any surprise to him that the storm lasted for seven days and nights: on the last one, he gently and carefully took the maidenhead of the youngest, Goneril, eighteen, lying back panting atop the furs with brilliant eyes fixed on him eagerly as he eased his cock into her, and when he’d got her used to it, before he started to move on her, he grinned down and asked her if there was anything she wanted.

Beline was a passionate huntswoman and the master of the holdfast’s hounds; she had asked to give Grey Wind a night of pleasure of his own, in hopes of getting some half-direwolf pups to raise. Grey Wind hadn’t minded any more than Robb had, and they’d both fucked their mates that night together, a rich lustful rutting wandering between their bodies. Cleo’s husband was a smith, and in gratitude for his tolerance of her going afield that night, she’d asked Robb for a proper castle forge. The holdfast’s hill had been chosen because it was the easiest to dig into, but the other hills all around were hard and full of iron ore; she wanted her husband to be able to make true castle-forged steel. Drea and Edda, the twins, came together on both their nights, and wanted silk, but not the fabric: they wanted to raise the worms themselves. They gave him a child’s sleeping gown that they’d made together from a small hunk of raw silk that their father had bought them off a passing ironborn trader, Drea spinning it with the soft wool of their goats, and Edda weaving the cloth; it was lusciously warm and soft.

“We’d need to build you a glassgarden, but I think some of the Essenes who’ve come to us were silk farmers there,” Robb said. “I’ll have Sansa send some of them to you, and help you start it.”

The sixth daughter, Felinda, had explained that she didn’t want to make love, but she still wanted her turn, because it wasn’t fair otherwise, looking at him sidelong to see if he agreed. “All right,” he said, smiling at her. “What do you want to do?” and she cuddled in with him under the covers and told him stories and legends of the Kings of Winter all night instead, most of them ones he’d never heard, that she’d gathered herself from the holds and smallfolk of the North, traveling as widely as she could on her own two legs and her father’s not very fat purse and begging rides from drovers and traders. And the last of them made him go silent and frowning, as she told him a tale of the immortal Night’s King from the land of Always Winter, who commanded an army of dead men and hated the world of the living.

What she wanted, more than anything, was to go to Oldtown, far in the south, and become a maester. Robb had to say slowly, with regret, “The Citadel won’t take women,” and then looking at her bowed head had said abruptly, “But if you want, you’ll come back to Winterfell with us, and I’ll ask Maester Luwin and Maester Wornos to teach you. Perhaps as you learn, you’ll make a new Citadel in the North, this one for women,” and she’d caught her breath, coming alight with the idea.

But when he asked Goneril, she looked up at him with her eyes shining and said, “I want a baby.”

“You…do?” Robb said, doubtful.  

“Then I could come live at Winterfell, with Queen Talisa and Lady Walda and Lady Nymeria, and dance and sing and play for them all day,” Goneril said dreamily, plainly already imagining herself an ornament at the royal court: she’d sung for all of them in the evenings, in a voice like a skylark, picking an accompaniment off a little hand-harp. “And never have to milk goats again,” she added, more prosaically.

“I’ll do my best,” Robb said wryly; he’d asked for it, he supposed, trying too hard to be a fitting part of the fairy-tale himself. They fucked four times that night, drowsing off and then rousing again for another round, again and again, and he wasn’t really surprised when he woke the next morning with three shafts of sunlight streaming in through the windows, the storm broken at last.

“I’m sorry to be stealing two of your daughters,” he said embarrassed to Master Erron, who only snorted tolerantly.

“I’ve too many of them anyway,” he said. “There, now; my little flower needs more sunshine than she can get here in the dark, and as for Felinda—” he raised both hands with the air of a man who’d given up trying to make sense of something.

So Robb took Goneril and Felinda both away with him and rode on to Castle Corben, where he did have a warm welcome, even if it couldn’t quite measure up to the standards of House Underhill. Lord Fisher promised to make good the expenses that his bannerman had laid out hosting the royal company, and feasted them on the largest fish Robb had ever seen, a monstrous thing larger than two oxen together, which had been roasted whole inside a salt shell that they had to break apart with hammers, all of them going at it together the length of the table and laughing. Along with the delicate soft fish, they were served a spirit infused with a bare hint of blackcurrants that didn’t taste especially strong and knocked the whole hallful of men so flat that by the end of the night they were all belting out songs together and getting half the words wrong and giggling like children, at least until half of them started vomiting.

Robb luckily wasn’t one of those unfortunate souls, but he was drunk enough to miss the right stair landing trying to get back to his chambers, and instead kept going around and around until he wound up at the top of the tower. He did realize the narrow bed was wrong, but he didn’t care by then; he crawled in and didn’t even mind finding it already filled with a warm body. Maester Jurens had been introduced to him earlier as a new arrival from the Citadel; he was a thin-lipped and rather prissy young man who had excused himself from the dinner as soon as the drinking had really got underway; when his bed was invaded, he woke up with a start and started to make a stammered protest, but Robb just put his hand over his mouth and said, “Sleep,” with firm authority, and did just that himself.

In the morning he felt extremely sorry for himself, and gladly drank both the entire jug of water and the tisane of honey and ginger and herbs that Jurens gave him, which improved matters considerably. Jurens had apparently reconciled himself to being despoiled; at least, when Robb started to haul himself out of bed and was just going to go back to his own, Jurens said, “What?” staring down at him over the empty flask with so much disappointment that Robb paused and said, a little dubiously, “Unless you’d like—?” and Jurens turned red and stammering again, and Robb said, “Right,” took the flask out of his hands, and pulled him back down into the bed. He spent the rest of the morning very pleasantly, except when his frantic guards burst in: they’d also been drunk, and had only just realized that he wasn’t in his bed, and they’d been diligently guarding an empty room all night. Poor Hal came through the door, at once turned crimson and fled right back out.

Robb cheerfully bade farewell to Lord Fisher two weeks later, having contributed significantly to the education or at least the corruption of his new maester, and making good on his own promise to Goneril, occasionally at the same time—he quite enjoyed being in the middle now that he’d had a taste of it at Saltwave, and neither of them had any objections—and set sail up the Hardrock, glad to be headed home; it took five days, and from there they took the road to Torrhen’s Square at a good pace. He had stopped to pass a night at a small holdfast halfway there when the gasping courier at last caught up, carrying a raven message that had chased him all the way from Castle Corben: a single line in Sansa’s hand: The dragon queen is coming.

Chapter Text

The last news of Daenerys they’d heard from Essos, she’d been on the verge of a final defeat. The harvests in her territory, too dependent on the labor of slaves, had failed yet again; famine was spreading, and the cities she ruled were ablaze with rioting. Talisa’s family had told them, to her sorrow, that Volantis, anxious to keep the chaos from spreading into their own lands, had entered into an alliance with the former rulers of Slavers’ Bay, funded with money from the rest of the Free Cities, to help them take their cities back. The slavemasters had besieged Daenerys in Meereen with an enormous fleet of nearly a thousand ships, and then rumor had it that she’d vanished out of the city entirely: some reports said that she’d flown away on one of her dragons, others that she’d been murdered. Her loyal men were still holding the defenses, but the last letter they’d had from Volantis had assured them that the city would soon fall.

“And they’ll open the slave markets back up as soon as it has, and put every one of the people Daenerys has freed back in chains,” Talisa had said flatly, as she’d handed back her father’s letter.

“I don’t like it either,” Robb said. “But she’s not been much kinder to them than their last masters were. It’s not just your countrymen who are telling us that people are starving in the streets: some of our own traders have been and seen it themselves, and they’ve no love for slavery.”

“What would you rather? Be a slave, or go hungry?” she had said, with a light of battle in her eyes, and he’d taken her hand and kissed it, and said, “I know. I don’t mean to argue it.” But he’d only been trying to ease her feelings. It hadn’t seemed like anything they could change, or anything that would even truly affect them, except if it at last stopped the flow of desperate refugees.

“It happened only seven weeks ago,” Sansa said now, when he’d got home as quick as he could. “The city was about to fall, and then Daenerys suddenly came back with all the Dothraki tribes unified under her rule, unleashed her fully grown dragons, and destroyed the whole army that had come against her. The fleet surrendered to her after she burned the entire vanguard. And once she secured the ships, she sent orders to all the rest of her cities to prepare to load them with supply for men and horses.”

Ravens from their traders had brought them the news before it had even reached the south; it had been for Sansa to tell Tyrion Lannister, and not the other way round. She’d already had an answer from the Red Keep as well: Tyrion had told her that they would hold a council of war at the crossroads inn to make plans for the defense of Westeros, and asked Robb to come south for it with promises not only of safe passage but also of supply for however many men he chose to bring. And we’ll be very glad to put every last man of them up for as long as your brother likes, he’d written. In consideration of the dignity of the crown, I can’t formally make a panicked yell for help, but between ourselves, the atmosphere in the Red Keep has been rather loud and alarmed since your letter came.

Robb grimaced over it, the summons he’d stopped expecting to have to answer. But in a way, it was easier having it; he knew at once that he did have to answer, and not because he’d given his word to the Lannisters. The Mad King’s daughter had got tired of tearing apart Essos, and now she meant to abandon her conquests there and invade Westeros with a horde of Dothraki and three dragons: of course she had to be stopped, if they could do it.

He started the muster going, but he rode to White Harbor himself with only a few hundred men and took ship for the south scarcely a week later to meet with the commanders of the royal army; Sansa had written back to Tyrion to insist that Uncle Edmure and the rivermen be allowed to keep the peace at the crossroads inn, so Robb wouldn’t be dragging his men all over the continent when he had no idea yet where they’d be fighting. He needed to know what the south could do, he needed their spy reports about Daenerys, and they needed to agree together upon a rough plan of campaign; then he’d know where to send his army.

Robb expected it would be difficult to make a shared plan with men who had been his enemies for so long, but he didn’t anticipate the true strangeness until he was there standing in the great gold-caparisoned pavilion with them. He only had a handful of his own bannermen with him, and his guard; they stood near the flapping panels of the tent with a draft at their back, at one side of the enormous table that the Lannisters had brought with them, which looked as though it had needed two wagons just to carry it. All the southron officers were talking around it to one another, ignoring them.

It dawned on Robb, as he listened to their discussion, that he’d never before stood over a plan of battle when he hadn’t been the one telling everyone else what they’d do. Now that he thought back, he could barely even recall anyone else speaking during his own planning sessions, except to ask a small question or two. He’d had men argue with him and question his decisions often enough, but not once he’d got them around a map and started laying out a fight for them. He’d thought it was only a sign that his officers approved of his decisions, that he hadn’t done anything stupid; he remembered how it had made him feel reassured, in his early campaigns.

Now it occurred to him for the first time, listening to the cream of southron military officers and their planning, that perhaps the cream of Northern bannermen had all kept quiet because they also hadn’t actually had the faintest fucking idea what they were doing.

Robb didn’t say anything. His own men began to glance at him a little doubtfully as the discussion kept going on, and he still hadn’t spoken; and then the southron lords began to follow their looks towards him, and whatever they saw in his face, perhaps it gave them a hint of what he was thinking, because one after another they stopped talking as well, a silence gradually spreading along the table until it came to the opposite side, where Jaime Lannister stood in all his masterful splendor.

He was as ever the very model of a knight, tall and well-built and offensively beautiful with his perfect jaw and his hair burnished gold and waving upon his brow, his gleaming armor of Lannister crimson and gold and the rich red of his cloak as clean as if it had been woven the day before. He presided over the table amid a respectful knot of Lannister knights with his uncle by his side, gesturing loftily to the positions on the table as they discussed—largely between themselves—any of the arguments which had reached their ears, with the calm assurance that the decisions were theirs to make. Anyone coming into the tent would at once have known him for the commander, and the master of all he surveyed.

But the silence prowled on little by little, soft-footed, through the ranks of his own men, until it came so close that even he couldn’t help noticing it, and stopped talking as well. Jaime glanced a little around the table, and then across at him. Robb just stared back, until finally Lannister said, in tones of exaggerated politeness, “Did you have any thoughts to offer, your Grace?”

“Only a question,” Robb said. “What are you doing this for?” 

Jaime narrowed his gaze a little. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why are you planning to fight her here?” Robb said, gesturing to the map.

“Did you miss the scenario explanation?” Jaime said. “If she lands in Maidenpool and marches along the eastroad—”

“And what makes you think she’s going to do that?” Robb broke in.

“It’s a good place for a landing with cavalry, fresh water—”

“So’s Duskendale, so’s Wickenden, so’s Arrowshot?” Robb said.

“It’s…a scenario,” Jaime said. “A military exercise? You…are familiar with them?”

“I prefer to just get on with winning,” Robb said. There were faintly muffled snorts of laughter from the Northmen around him, and a pleasing glitter of irritation came into Lannister’s eye. “So you don’t think she’s going to land in Maidenpool, and you don’t think she’s going to march along the eastroad, but if she did, this is where you’d want to fight her? Why? It doesn’t look good at all, does it? You’ve been saying it yourselves: this long field here to the east, all the scrub along the south, too many places for them to run. We need to keep our men in close with hers, or she’ll just burn them.”

“Do you see a better place to fight her along the eastroad?” Jaime said.

“No, I can’t say I do,” Robb said. “Which means I don’t want to fight her along the eastroad. So I’m not planning a battle there. Why are you?” There was a bit more stirring around the table, uneasy looks among the Lannister men. “You’ve guessed five things in a row that she might do, none of which you want her to do, none of which you truly think she will do, and then you’ve picked out the least bad ground you can find along the way to lose on, and you want to spend the day thinking about how you’ll do it. Doesn’t it sound mad, when you say it aloud?”

By then, Jaime was glaring at him across the table as if he was dreaming of leaping across it to grab his throat. “Do forgive us for wasting your time,” he bit out. “What would you like to do instead?”

“If you want to start with an exercise, to play something out, get a feel for how it might go, I suppose a landing at Maidenpool is good enough,” Robb said. He took hold of the long map and dragged it along the table, all the markers toppling as he hauled the landing point back into the middle; squires went jumping to catch them. He stood back and waved a hand. “But then just have a look. I can see five better battlegrounds at a glance. What about this valley south of Castle Mooton? Heavy forested slopes to conceal us from the air, narrow ground to stop them maneuvering away. We could plan to fight her here. There’s some sense in that, at least.”

Some of Lannister’s anger had slipped away, gone faintly incredulous instead, his head tilted and a little disbelieving smile upon his face; when Robb finished, he said slowly, as if he were speaking to a dim-witted child, “So you’re saying…that from everywhere near the landing point, you’ve picked out a battlefield that ideally suits you, with the perfect terrain, where you’re confident you’ll win, and you want to spend the day thinking about how you’ll do it. Doesn’t that… sound mad, when you say it aloud?” he asked, laced with mockery; his smile was even widening. “Just…assuming that she’ll come there to meet you, right where you want her?”

“Why not?” Robb said. “You did,” and he watched with a meaty satisfaction as Jaime’s smirking fell away. “I picked Whispering Woods out of a book of maps on the march from Moat Cailin to the Twins, as soon as we learned you’d besieged Riverrun. I remember I was quite pleased to turn it up,” Robb added, brightly; all the Lannister men were darting looks at each other. “You outnumbered me a great deal; I needed good ground.”

“We only came there because the Blackfish was raiding us,” Jaime said, as if he was driving the words past the muscles of his jaws. “What would you have done if we’d caught him two weeks before? We almost did.”

Robb looked over at his great-uncle, who was standing nearby, watching Lannister over folded arms with a meanly pleased little smirk of his own. “When was it my scouts ran into your men? Five days before the battle; I think?”

“Aye, that Sensday night,” the Blackfish said, without looking away from Jaime.

Robb turned back. “Until then, I didn’t know the Blackfish was raiding you. If I had known, I wouldn’t have bothered worrying about it. I picked my ground, marched to it, and sorted out how to bring you to it when I got close enough. And then,” he finished, very gently, “I beat the shit out of you. Because I spent my time planning how to win, instead of lose.”

He glanced around the tent, a line now drawn through it, with the Northmen and the rivermen all watching him with a brightness in their eyes, and the lions all gone thin and hungry; Jaime was standing like a statue carved of stone, except for the furious glittering in his eyes. “Shall we try it?” Robb asked, and gestured to the valley on the map. “Why don’t we start with the Reach pikes at the base of the southern slope, and the crownland longbows along the middle ridge, where they’ll command the field. Go on,” he added, to the wide-eyed squire standing across from him, clutching six markers for pikemen in his hands, and the boy gave a start and put them down, and one of the knights at the far end, a Reach man, leaned over to slide him the archers.

#

They did a decent day’s work by the end of it. The most useful part of it was noticing how many times they’d all forgotten about the dragons, over and over. It was easy to forget about them. No matter what else was going on, the enemy had these three beasts that could turn up anywhere on the field at a moment’s notice and suddenly start breathing deadly fire on your position. It felt like nonsense, like cheating, playing a game of chess with someone who would just steal your pieces off the board right in front of your face and insist that they hadn’t. And, Robb could already tell, it would be almost as easy to worry about the dragons so much that you forgot to pay enough attention to what else was happening.

He’d now got the southern spy reports of the four battles she’d fought with the cities of Slavers Bay—Kevan Lannister had at last grudgingly handed those over when Robb had asked again pointedly, at the end of the planning session—and he was almost certain that was how she was winning. It was hard to know; the Master of Whispers had written notes on the reports to say that each part of every one of the battles was only a much-hazarded guess, and the spies had also heard of these ten other things that might have happened instead. And out of what they’d thought were the best guesses, they’d cobbled together a confused account of each battle that didn’t make any real sense.

But as Robb read the reports over and over, looking at all the alternatives they’d listed, trying to get some idea of the battles to come clear in his head, that was what began to take shape: a natural flowing that would take the enemy from blindness to panic. Offer a battle, what looked like an ordinary battle, and then, as soon as the enemy was committed, hit them with the dragons somewhere. It almost wouldn’t matter where. Not somewhere very significant—it would be more likely that the enemy would have thought about the dragons attacking them there. Instead, hit something only a little bit important, and not very interesting—a fairly secure defensive position somewhere that the enemy would be counting on holding, that they wouldn’t really have worried about? Yes.

Robb looked back at the reports with that in mind, and almost at once picked those first dragon attacks out of the accounts of all four battles: one of them had been the spy’s guess and the rest were in among the other alternatives; he circled them all. That was what they’d done. And suddenly the enemy commander would realize that the rules had been changed on him out of nowhere, and he could be fucked in ways he hadn’t properly imagined, and he’d start to panic. Robb drew lines from each of those attacks to the second stage of the battles, the mistakes he could almost see the other side making: pulling in their forces, trying urgently to re-secure the undermined position from the first attack—even though none of those positions had been especially important—and shifting their forces into worse positions as a result.

From there, the Unsullied, who plainly had discipline like iron and could maneuver as quick as lightning, at once drove into the softest place. Robb found those moves as well, and then where the dragons had struck again—at almost the same time, he was sure—at a truly critical place, the real target of the entire assault—

He straightened up nodding to himself in satisfaction; the rest of it would all have unrolled from there. He cleared off his own map table and lay blank paper down and started to sketch all four of the battles out fresh and clean. Working backwards, knowing where the key strikes had been, he could guess at the starting positions and the terrain. He was just beginning on the last of them when one of his squires put his head in and said doubtfully, “Your Grace, would you receive Ser Jaime Lannister?”

“If he leaves his arms,” Robb said. “Go on and take mine outside with you.” Lannister ducked to come inside and straightened facing him over the table, his eyes brilliant with rage and his mouth and face hard. He hadn’t spoken at all the rest of the day in the tent; he’d only stood beside the table watching and listening. With murder in his heart, Robb had rather thought—a thought full of vicious pleasure, and there was still more of it to savor. “Was there something you wanted to discuss, Ser Jaime?” he said with an inquisitive air. “Any…questions you had for me?”

A muscle shifted in Lannister’s jaw. “Will you still be enjoying yourself this much when she sails over the walls of Winterfell with three dragons?” he said. “Oh, you scored points on me today, I’ll grant you. And then wasted six hours of our time playing through a battle that she would never…give…you…” He’d caught sight of the drawings on the table as he spoke, and then he glanced a second time, and then he looked a third, and stopped talking.

Jaime didn’t speak again for a long time, his eyes darting from one battlefield diagram to the other. Robb had drawn out the companies as boxes and the lines of movement going from one position to the next. It was a shorthand he’d worked out for himself, and most of his officers needed it explained five times before they started to grasp it, but Lannister’s stare traced the lines through the course of each battle, and by the time he’d got to the last one, unfinished, he’d plainly understood the notation: what was throwing him was the battles it was describing. He slowly looked up at Robb with an expression as bewildered as a man who’d been dropped on an unfamiliar shore a thousand miles from home. After a moment, he said harshly, “Those aren’t—the reports, those positions; most of those aren’t our best intelligence.”

Robb shrugged. “But this is what really happened, or close enough. Because that’s how she’s doing it.”

Lannister stared back down at the diagrams. “How she’s… Are you saying—she’s doing the same thing? In all these battles?”

“More or less,” Robb said, and walked him through the last one as he finished drawing it out. It was good to say the words aloud and make certain of his own thoughts, and even better to luxuriate in Lannister’s looks: the man grew less bewildered and more anguished with every word, a helpless outrage coming into his face, as if he couldn’t argue with anything Robb told him, and yet couldn’t bear to believe it, that there might be someone who truly did know what he was doing, when it came to war, and wasn’t just hoping for the gods to favor him because he looked more powerful than his enemy. Jaime was good enough to understand the explanation quickly; surely he’d been convinced that he was as good as anyone could be, and that if he didn’t know what he was doing, no one else did either. 

When Robb finished, Jaime stood beside the table clenched a while longer, and then he burst out, a demand, “How would you have gotten me? If it hadn’t been the Blackfish.”

“You? Oh, you made it too easy for me,” Robb said. “You and your father tore my uncle Edmure to pieces in one fight after another when you invaded, because he stupidly divided up his forces. That made you hungry to believe that I was stupid, too: I knew that as soon as I’d heard you’d laid siege to Riverrun while I was still mustering my forces. So I marched before I had raised all of my levies, and that made it certain in your minds. Then I dangled a beautiful fight in an empty field for your father, and off he marched to that empty field as if he thought I’d really go there to meet him, and meanwhile you were left to sit around, glum about your sad fate, the proud lion trapped at a boring siege while the war got polished off three hundred miles away. I expect you’d have come running to Whispering Woods if one of your scouts had told you he saw three men and a donkey camped under a Tully banner.”

“And what about the siege?” Jaime said with a snarling, as much as to say Robb had him dead to rights. “You didn’t get to choose your ground for that. How did you know you could win?”

“Is that a joke?” Robb took a fistful of markers from his chest and set them out on the board in five little groups spaced wide around a large circle, then took another fistful, twice the size of each of the little ones, and set it in the middle of them, and gestured. “Yes, how could I possibly imagine I’d win. I outnumbered you two to one at every point!” Jaime stared at it. “There was a river fork between every one of your camps! What did you even think you were doing?”

“It’s the only way to besiege Riverrun!” Jaime snapped. “You can’t secure the approaches otherwise!”

“And that’s why only a fool would ever besiege Riverrun with an enemy army in the field,” Robb said. “When I got the raven from my uncle, I thanked the gods for their kindness. Half your men wear plate!” he added, snorting a laugh. “It was like you were inviting me to win.” Jaime shoved away from the table in a burst of furious energy, pacing the tent back and forth as if he was in a cage, devouring the space in his strides. “To be fair, that is how your father beat me in the end,” Robb added, watching him.

Jaime jerked. “What?”

“He let me win,” Robb said. “He let me win and win and win, piled victories in my arms until they were higher than my head, and I couldn’t see where I was going and tripped over my own feet with all of them tumbling around me. Should’ve started saying no thank you.” He grimaced. “It was a good lesson. And I won’t need another,” he added softly, letting menace come into it.

But Jaime seemed to have gone beyond being threatened; he only stared back with a twisting expression and demanded, “How would you get her to come to the valley?” He sounded as if could hardly bear to hear the answer, but could still less bear not to ask.

Robb shrugged a little. “I don’t think I would, really. It wasn’t bad to work through it, for a start, but there’ll be better places to fight her.”

“Better places,” Lannister said, half under his breath, a growling in his throat. “But how?”

“I don’t know yet,” Robb said. “The closer the battle comes, the more I’ll know about it, and her, and how to do it. You need to start sending me the spy reports when you get them, not making me pry them out of you two years cold,” he added. “I need to understand her. I need to feel how she—moves, how her army moves. Where she lands, that will matter, but it won’t decide where the real fight will be. It’s just where she comes into the field, where we can start picking up her rhythm, her pace—”

“You make it sound like you’re going to ask her to dance!”

“Yes, that’s right,” Robb said. “Of course that’s right. We are asking her to dance. We just have to make sure we have the lead.”

“What are you talking about?” Jaime said, and now it was just a flat-out roaring of anguish, a lion wailing about the thorn in his foot.

Robb laughed aloud and came round the table and stopped ten paces away from him and gestured between them. “Look, Lannister, here’s what you were doing. She’s come into the ballroom. You’re standing over here calling, ‘Daenerys! Daenerys! Over here!’” He stretched out a hand in a mock yearning gesture as Jaime stared at him. “If you wait here for her to come to you, who’s the one who’s got momentum? Who’s the one who’s moving, who’s making the decisions? It would be her. Now look.”

He crossed the tent and came close to him. Jaime leaned back a little, eyeing him as warily as if he’d had a naked blade in his hand. “Here I am,” Robb said. “Try not to let me get your hand. Not a fight,” he added, for giving Lannister a fight would have only been foolish, “just making one move at a time, taking turns; think of it like a festival dance.” He reached for Jaime’s hand; Jaime took a step back and moved it out of reach. Robb turned reaching up the other way for his other hand, and Jaime backed another step; Robb turned the other way so Jaime was between him and the table with no way to step back, and reached again on either side of him.

Jaime rolled his eyes and just raised his hands straight up over his head, putting them out of reach with a pointed look. “Now what?” Robb grinned at him and caught him by the shoulder with a hand and used the broad muscled solidity of it as a good platform and jumped up for a grab. Jaime jerked his hand aside with an exclamation, “Oh, for—” and Robb landed with a foot between his legs and pushed him the rest of the way sideways with both hands, with all his strength. As Jaime tripped, Robb held out his hand and Jaime grabbed it to keep from falling, and Robb said, “Got you.”

Jaime froze, looked at their hands, and glared at him with an exasperated look. “Very funny. What was this supposed to teach me? Never to dance with you?”

“But you are dancing with me,” Robb said, raising up their hands a little. “You were trying not to, so every time I came for you, you had to shift. You were answering my moves, and that meant I was in the lead, and I could lead you where I wanted. I couldn’t have told you before we started where I’d move, what I’d do, because I didn’t know where you’d move, but I could tell you that I’d keep going until I got what I wanted. That’s all it is. That’s how I’ll get her.”

“And what if I just did this?” Jaime snapped, and hauled him forward by their clasped hands, then grabbed him by the leg and heaved him up onto the table with a single smooth movement and then shoved Robb down on his back and pinned him with one hand, still gripping the other one tight between them: fuck, he was strong. Robb couldn’t help but have his stomach tighten, pressed down on his back with Lannister leaning over him, standing between his legs; he could feel the sheer force of him, all that power coiled back up again, but still at the ready to be unleashed. “Now who decides how we’re dancing, Stark?” Jaime said, smirking down at him almost more gleeful than vicious, so delighted with himself and the chance to use it.

If only he’d paid a little better attention to the lesson. Robb grinned up at him, and it was vicious. “He does.”

“What?” Jaime jerked his head up at the low deep growling, to stare straight into Grey Wind’s glaring eyes and bared teeth where he was crouched just before Robb’s bed, ready to spring over the table directly at him.

“I didn’t let you into this tent because I trusted you not to break my neck,” Robb said. “Of course, maybe I could have. From what I saw today, if you didn’t have me to fight this war for you, you’d lose in the time it took her to march.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Jaime muttered, holding perfectly still and not looking away from Grey Wind even long enough to blink.

“Do you even do that with people you’re not related to?” Robb said, putting an arm behind his head and giving Jaime a lazy look up and down, enjoying himself: fear did look so very good on him.

Jaime did dart a quick glare down at him for that. “At least I have some limits. How many women have you fathered bastards on? Is it five or six by now?”

“Pity you don’t have any more sisters; maybe you’d catch up,” Robb said. “If you aren’t offering, maybe you’d better let me up before you get yourself hurt.”

“Step away with that beast ready for my blood?” Jaime said. “I’m not sure I trust you not to send him at me. Besides, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” he added, and shoved up hard against him, a deliberate rolling thrust of his hips, right where it might have done some good, and Robb stared up at him in dismay as his cock got hard between them, realizing he’d been enjoying himself a little too much.

Jaime stared back as frozen as when he’d seen Grey Wind’s teeth. Robb could actually see the idea go running straight down from his brain to his cock, and then right back up again into a circling between lust and panic, and after he’d watched it go round three times he said, “Oh, fuck it,” and reached up and got Jaime’s head and pulled him down and out of it.

As if he’d been let loose from a cage, Lannister was instantly going at him in a frenzy, unbuckling Robb’s belt to get the skirts of his leather jerkin pushed wide and dragging his trousers down from underneath them without waiting; Robb had to shove hard to get him to come up enough so he could get the jerkin the rest of the way off, and he pulled off his own shirt while Jaime was hauling up his legs to yank his boots off and out of the way so he could drag his trousers off just as urgently. As soon as he had, Jaime fell back upon him like he thought Robb was going to try and escape; he’d just got his trousers down barely far enough to get his cock out, and he grabbed Robb’s thighs and dragged him to the edge of the table and plainly was about to try to go right in him.

Robb grabbed his ear and twisted a yelp out of him. “No, you cunt! You need oil,” he said. Jaime only stared at him with his eyes wide, an innocent lamb being told of the butchering knife. Robb shoved him back with a foot and got off the table. “Take your clothes off, you look like a twat,” he said, and went for the tray with his supper on it; there had been olive oil for the bread. When he came back with the dish, Jaime was taking his clothes off, a bit jerkily; he darted looks at Robb as if he’d been imagining this was a fight he’d been about to win, and now wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

He made a small frantic noise like pain when Robb greased his cock, and then when Robb got back on the table, he seemed almost doubtful about coming back at him, pushing in so slowly now that he was taking forever. Robb would have been ready to shove him off and throw him out of the tent, only Jaime had a cock just as magnificent as the rest of him, long and exactly thick enough to make it a stretch to take him, but a pleasurable one, and Robb just let his head fall back and let Jaime work his way in.

But when he was in, and started to just tentatively push at him a bit, Robb got up on his elbows and glared at him. “For fuck’s sake, Lannister, we’re not having tea and cakes at a convent. Do something with it.”

“Oh,” Jaime said in a faintly pained voice, and then made up for it: he got his arms under Robb’s hips and back and heaved him straight up off the table and carried him bodily over to the bed with his cock still buried in him, supporting his entire weight jutting out as if it weren’t an impossible thing. He knelt onto it and tipped Robb’s shoulders to the bed and pulled his legs up higher around his waist and finally started to really fuck him, gripping Robb’s legs tight with his hands like iron and hauling him onto his cock with each thrust, just pounding at him.

Robb sank back against the pillows to feel it, breathing hard, liking just to look at Jaime as he worked: oh, he was beautiful, the muscles like carved stone standing out all over his body and gilded with sweat and firelight. His own cock was standing hard against his belly, red and flushed, and he stroked himself a little, but he didn’t want more than that yet; he wanted to ride the pleasure a while, let it build in his body, the warm glow spreading from deep within, and then Jaime’s breath started to come in small pained gasps, and Robb said, “Oh, don’t you even—” as he realized, but it was too late; Jaime sank deep into him, his weight coming forward and pressing Robb’s legs back, and Jaime came just like that, panting in short stuttering breaths through his nose as his cock spent.

He sank back down on his knees gasping, sliding out. And then after a moment, he just let himself topple over onto his back, and flung his arm up over his eyes, as if he thought that was it. Robb sat up and glared down at him. “Is that a joke? Were you trying to race the candle to the mark?” Jaime lowered his arm and stared at him. “No wonder you didn’t want to bother taking your clothes off.”

“Sorry I couldn’t fuck you any better,” Jaime said, gone red and defiant. “Would you like me to have another go at it?”

“How long will I be waiting?” Robb said, with a pointed look at Jaime’s spent cock; Jaime flinched with the visible desire to cover himself. Robb snorted and got up to go get the oil. “Let’s see if you can be taught something in the meantime.”

When he turned back, Jaime had gone stiff and alarmed, edging back in the bed and darting a look at Grey Wind as if he thought he was going to have to fight his way out of the tent. Robb paused and then grinned slowly. “What’s the matter, Lannister? Afraid of cock? Or just afraid that you’ll like it?”

Jaime glared at him, still tensed. “Do you really think I’m going to let you fuck me?”

“Let me? Like you’d be doing me a favor?” Robb said, letting amusement into his voice. “When I fuck someone, Lannister, they have a good time. Because I’m not a selfish prick.” Jaime looked waveringly indignant, as if he couldn’t make up his mind to be offended by the accusation. “But that’s fine, then.” Robb put the dish of oil back on the table and jerked his head to the tent flaps. “Go on.” Jaime darted a look towards them and back at him, warily. “You’re done, aren’t you? So what are you still here for? Take your things, you can get dressed outside.”

“I can—what?” Jaime’s voice rose.

“Did you think you were going to have a nice lie-in here in my tent?” Robb said. “After you couldn’t be bothered? I don’t think so. Get your things and get out.”

“And what exactly will your guards think if I come out of your tent naked?” Jaime said through his teeth.

“I hadn’t really given it any thought,” Robb said, putting on an air of serious consideration. “But now that you mention it, I’m sure they’ll think that I fucked you and threw you out, and so will everyone else in this camp.” Jaime was agape at him, eyes shocked and wide. “You said it yourself. I’ve got bastards by four different women, and a beautiful wife who’s given me three children. And you’ve spent your life in the Kingsguard refusing to get married. Won’t be much of a mystery to anyone, will it?”

“Oh, you bastard,” Jaime said blankly.

“There’s what, fifteen jongleurs among the camp followers? I can’t wait to hear what they make of it. Maybe I’ll offer a prize. I wonder which one your father will like best,” he added.

Jaime flinched; oh no, he didn’t like that idea at all. “And what if I tell everyone the truth?” he threw back, a stupid defense.

“You’re going to go round telling people that you finished in less time than it takes to say a Sevensgrace?” Robb said. “Do it if you like. That’ll make just as good a song as the other. ‘The Lion of Lannister, so quick with his sword.’ That’s not bad, is it? I should tell one of them.”

Lannister was just staring at him in horror. “You’re completely shameless, aren’t you?”

“What have I got to be ashamed of?” Robb said. “That I went to bed with you? That’s like saying I should be ashamed because I invited you to dinner, offered you a good meal, and you drank all the wine and pissed on the table. You can be ashamed, you’re the one behaving like a cunt. Now get out before I have Grey Wind chase you naked the whole way through the camp.”

Jaime stared at him and then at the tent flaps and back at him in panicky desperation, and then gave a jump like a rabbit and scrambled off and away from the bed when Grey Wind gave a sharp bark and lunged at him snapping. Robb watched with pleasure as Jaime edged sideways back to his clothing, and then stopped, looked down at the pile, and turned to him almost disbelieving. Robb raised a brow at him, letting Jaime see his amusement. “Maybe I’m being too hard on you,” he said. “You’re showing me a good time after all. This is going to be much more fun than fucking you would have been. Really you should thank me. After this gets out, everyone will stop thinking that you fucked your sister.”

“You absolute cunt,” Jaime said in despairing tones. “Fine.”

“Fine?” Robb said, and started laughing. “Fine? You think I want you anymore?” Jaime gawked at him. “I wouldn’t have you now even if you got on your knees and apologized.” He paused thoughtfully and then added, giving him a slow deliberate smirk, “Well…maybe then.”

It almost made him feel sorry for the man, Jaime gazed at him with such astonishment, as if he’d only just realized that yet again, he’d been utterly taken apart exactly while he’d thought he was cock of the walk. Robb smiled at him a bit more widely and glanced down meaningfully at the ground just before him. Jaime looked at the tent flap again, but he wasn’t going out there, no; the man who’d spent seventeen years sneaking around the Red Keep letting another man fuck his wife wasn’t going out there, and when instead he turned back to stare at Robb helplessly, Robb said, “Make up your mind, Lannister. Or I’ll make it for you.”

And it was better than just fucking him, it was so much better, watching him come slowly across the tent and go to his knees. Jaime was trying not to look at Robb’s cock, still heavy and full just in front of his face, but he was looking at it; he licked his lips, involuntarily, and then he ground out, “I’m sorry,” with a sound of throbbing anger in his throat—but also the hoarseness of lust, already anticipating the next demand. Robb reached under his chin and tilted his face up, to enjoy his glaring fury, and then he said gently, “I accept your apology. You can get dressed and go.”

Jaime stayed there on his knees a moment longer, just turning his head to stare after him while Robb walked away over to the metal jug of water warming by his brazier and poured it in the basin to wash up. Jaime finally lurched back up to his feet, but he didn’t move towards his clothes. Grey Wind gave a last huffing growl and went to curl back up to sleep on his thick rug; Jaime followed the movement and looked back at Robb again; the helplessness was back again, even more bewildered.

Robb finished washing his face and turned to look at him, wiping the water away with a cloth and dipping it in the basin for more, sliding it down over his neck and chest, letting droplets run down over his body, knowing that they were sliding all the way down his belly, over his cock and his thighs. Jaime’s eyes darted to follow the trails. “Did you really think I’d make it that easy for you?” Robb said.

“What?” Jaime said, his eyes jerking back up.

“That I’d put a knife to your throat and make you?” Robb said. “No. I’m not a raper, and I don’t fuck scared little girls.” He put down the cloth and walked back across the tent towards him, Jaime’s eyes widening again, and when Robb was so close that he could have just leaned up and caught Jaime’s mouth with his own, he stopped there and said softly, “So if you want to lie awake every night the rest of this council only imagining it, go. Otherwise, stop being such a coward and get back in bed.”

And it had been better than just fucking him, but fucking him was magnificent, too; Jaime spread out on the bed beneath him still lusciously panicky, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing, and also wildly excited, his cock rampant and flushed against his belly as Robb kissed him and stroked an oiled finger in and out of him, gently. His breath came in quick gasps as Robb bit and licked and nuzzled down his throat, bit at his peaked nipples and went over the muscles of his chest and down his belly, and then it began to grow rough in his throat in shocked desperate eagerness as Robb came closer to his cock.

Jaime’s hips lurched up off the bed the first time Robb softly lipped at it, and he pressed them down with his arm across them. “Shh,” he said, a command, and Jaime managed to still himself, only quivering and making small noises in the back of his throat as Robb went slowly and luxuriously all over the perfect long hard column of it, tracing the veins with his tongue and playing with the pulse in them, nuzzling the velvety skin. Jaime wasn’t cut, either; Robb tried playing with the foreskin, sliding it back and forth with his thumb, his tongue, licking at the head.

“Please,” Jaime said, a shameless groaning, and surely such good manners deserved a reward; Robb gave him a little suck, just the head, and Jaime moaned beneath him and bunched his fists into the bedding, and Robb kissed and mouthed and licked him all over while Jaime kept gasping. He made a small moan of disappointment when Robb pulled away. “Oh, no, it’s not going to be over before it starts this time,” Robb said, grinning down at him as he sat up and got between his legs, and Jaime swallowed and watched him come at him as nervously as a virginal bride, only Talisa had been a virginal bride and she’d all but jumped straight onto his cock the first time.

But Robb still treated him gently, pushing in only a little at first and coming back out, rubbing more oil on himself and going back in, and the taut fear began to ease out of Jaime’s muscles as he started to trust his own body, the first hints of pleasure, and it became easier to press onward, until suddenly the last resistance yielded and Robb slid all the rest of the way into him. “Ah,” Jaime said, a small huffing gasp, and Robb took hold of his cock and stroked him, a couple of good long pulls up and down, and said, “There, you see? Nothing to be afraid of.”

Jaime groaned faintly. “Fuck you, Stark.”

“Not this time,” Robb said, and started to fuck him. Jaime was panting for breath almost at once, his hips moving along to meet the strokes, getting louder, and he started to make muffled grunting noises; when Robb had to pause for a bit, he made a wordless protest and tried to writhe and push up against him. “Patience,” Robb said.

“Is that a joke?” Jaime snarled weakly, and Robb laughed and slid carefully all the way out of him and said, “All right, turn over and come up on your hands and knees,” and Jaime ground his jaw and turned over and then gasped, “Oh, sweet Mother,” a little high-pitched, as Robb went straight back into him, hard and fast.

“Now I’m going to fuck you until you come,” Robb said. “Are you ready for it?”

“Yes,” Jaime said, reduced to desperation, and Robb stroked his thumbs over his hips, enjoying the sight of his cock buried in him to the hilt, sliding in and out, and then he gradually picked up the pace and started to hammer Jaime with strokes until he was groaning and saying yes, yes, over and over, frantically, getting so loud the whole camp was going to know about this by the morning after all, and Jaime gasped again and said, “Oh, fuck, yes,” and then, “Yes,” and then Robb reached around and gripped his cock and instantly Jaime was jerking with shudders beneath him, coming wildly, ragged breaths wheezing out of him, and Robb gripped onto his hips and let himself go with the deep satisfying sense of a job well done.

He got off him and let himself down, breathing deep, still awake but his whole body so relaxed and easeful it almost felt like the restfulness of sleep, utterly sated. Jaime was lying beside him still sucking for air with his head buried in his arms so completely that he was surely trying to hide it from himself that he did after all like cock. Robb grinned to himself, vicious and victorious both; he didn’t feel the least little bit of sympathy, only the pride of having mastered a challenging lesson, under the tutelage of a hard teacher. He’d have to send Yara a present to thank her, maybe a nice big merchantman: Lord Manderly was almost done building the next six in White Harbor, for the Volantene trade. He’d name it the Liontamer: she’d understand what it was for, and laugh for days.

He stretched his arms out overhead and settled back in, putting an arm behind his head; he could feel sleep ready to receive him like the furs beneath his body, only there was a faint movement still going in his mind, something like an itch that wanted scratching, as if the dance he’d started with Jaime wasn’t quite over; he thought back to it, the ballroom, the grand entrance, and he sat up abruptly and turned and gave Jaime a smack on his arse. “That’s how we get her,” he said, as Jaime yelped and jerked his head up to glare at him.

“What?” Jaime said.

“You have to give Storm’s End back to Stannis,” Robb said.

“Are you out of your mind?” Jaime said, staring up at him. “It took us three years to take Storm’s End! We were sitting outside that keep the entire miserable autumn. You think we’re just going to give it back?”

“Yes,” Robb said. “Make peace with him, marry Tommen to Shireen, something. You have to. Stannis can hold a fortress like no other man in the whole kingdom; he held Storm’s End with two thousand starving men against a hundred thousand Tyrells, he held it for three years against you—”

Jaime sat up frowning at him. “You want him to hold Storm’s End against Daenerys?”

“No, of course not!” Robb said. “What sort of idiot would she have to be to besiege a man who can do that?” Jaime glared at him. “But we need him off Dragonstone, because if he’s there, she won’t try to take that.”

“Dragonstone?” Jaime said, bewildered. “Why would she take Dragonstone? It’s just a waste of supply and time. She doesn’t need a base to start gathering support; she already has a hundred thousand Dothraki—”

Robb waved him off the wrong track in impatience. “Why is she coming?” he said. “She’s got an empire in Essos, a thousand miles away by sea; why is she coming to Westeros in the first place?”

“She wants the Iron Throne back,” Jaime said.

“Why?” Robb said. “She’s not truly coming to avenge her father or Rhaegar; she never knew them. She already has more cities to rule than she can manage. So what is she after? Think about the titles she’s using, the stories we’ve heard. Breaker of Chains. Turning the Unsullied on their own masters. Slaves pouring out of Yunkai and carrying her on their hands. Tearing down the slave markets. She’s a great conqueror, but that’s not all she wants to be. If she did, she’d have come here instead of going on to Meereen all those years ago. She wanted something else, something more. She wanted those hands. She wanted to be—”

“A hero,” Jaime said, staring at him. “A savior.”

“Right,” Robb said. “And she went and got it, but it’s not turning out well for her, is it? What’s happening right now in her cities?”

“Everything’s a mess,” Jaime said. “She destroyed the slave trade and put nothing in its place, so everyone’s starving, and…hates her,” frowning a little as he began to catch the idea.

Robb nodded. “The slog of making those cities into an empire that’s not built on slaves, that’s not work for a Mother of Dragons and a Breaker of Chains. She doesn’t know how to do it, and she’s tired of trying and failing and being hated. That’s why she’s coming to Westeros. Not to kill and conquer us. She’ll do that if we refuse to bend the knee, but what she really wants is to be welcomed. The true queen, returned to her throne. She wants to be loved again.”

Jaime was nodding a little, slowly.

“And Dragonstone was the seat of the Targaryen heirs,” Robb said. “It’s where Aegon began his conquest. If it’s vacant and inviting, she’ll take it, establish herself, and start to make a show of being the rightful queen. Even though you’re right: it’ll be a waste of her supply, and a waste of her time. She will try to raise support, even though she doesn’t need any; she’ll send messages to every lord in Westeros, inviting them to come and bend the knee—”

“Some of them will do it,” Jaime said pointedly.

He wasn’t wrong. “Yes, we can’t have that,” Robb muttered. “She can’t have a single lord take her part if we can help it.” The answer wasn’t hard to find, though, as soon as he’d thought about it. “I’ll write to them all first,” he said after a moment. “Before she lands, I’ll tell them to have courage, and that even though the invasion will be cruel, we’ll defeat her in six months’ time—”

“How can you possibly know you’ll beat her in six months?” Jaime said, glaring at him in outrage.

“I don’t,” Robb said, which only made Jaime look more outraged, if anything. “But I’ll say it anyway. And your father will write to all of them as well, and he’ll say that if any lord goes over to her, in those six months, he’ll utterly destroy him and his family root and stem: down to the last infant, down to the last household retainer; he’ll take the bones out of their crypts and throw them to dogs, and wipe their names out of the annals. And then, the lords of Westeros will look at those two letters, those two promises, one from me and one from him, and they’ll think to themselves, perhaps we’ll wait six months and see.

“And that’ll be long enough. She’ll get impatient and angry—no one coming to bend the knee, no one hailing her, all because they’re afraid of us, the Lannisters and the Starks and the Baratheons, the same traitors who betrayed her house. There will be little troubles with her supply, we’ll do some small raiding at sea; her fighting men will be getting restive sitting around Dragonstone with nothing to do. So she’ll get tired of waiting, and then she’ll launch her assault.”

He got up and went back to the table, got the sketches out of the way—they’d been smudged and crumpled; he’d have to get someone to do them over—and pulled out the maps of the eastern crownlands, with Dragonstone off the coast. Jaime had come to stand at his side, watching intently. Robb tapped the map. “Here. Duskendale will be an obvious place for her to make her first landing. So we’ll put a heavy defense there, a great force of infantry. An invitation to battle. But it’s a large town with many smallfolk. So instead of meeting us there, and likely killing tens of thousands of her subjects, she’ll land at Rook’s Rest instead. She’ll think that the Dothraki and the dragons will make light of the distance between the two.

“We’ll have the lord at Rook’s Rest flee without a fight, and have the servants hand the keep over to her. She’ll be delighted. It’ll feel like everything she’s hoping for. And then we’ll hold out a battle to her. The one you were going to give her, the one she’s looking for. The one where she can do this,” he gestured to the diagrams he’d made, “and end the war in a single blow. We’ll march our forces out of Duskendale, half a day towards her, and take up positions across the east coast road.

“But as soon as she marches out of Rook’s Rest, those servants of the castle, whom we’ll have replaced with soldiers before she arrived, will get out hidden caches of weapons and kill all the men she leaves behind holding the place, and they’ll steal or destroy all the supply she’s left there, and burn any of her ships in the harbor. We’ll have ships in hiding up and down the coasts of Blackwater Bay, which will hit all of her supply lines from Essos at the same time. And we’ll have burned all the fields between Rook’s Rest and Duskendale, so there’ll be nothing for her to forage. Within three days, the Dothraki horses will be starving, and she’ll be furious at our treachery and hungry for a fight. 

“And then, before she’s halfway to us, we’ll fall back. To…here.” Robb drew a line over the countryside. “Marter Valley. Forested ground, hilly and narrow; bad for the Dothraki, bad for the Unsullied, bad for the dragons. But she’ll come anyway, because she’ll want a fight, and because she’ll need to come to battle quick before the horses start failing. Then we’ll take half a dozen defensive positions on the slopes, ones that don’t matter much, they’ll only give us good vantage points for archery attacks—and she’ll carry out her favorite plan of battle all over again. Only it won’t go the way she expects.”

He straightened up with a nod, certainty settling into him. Everything might change, between the moment she took ship, and the moment of the battle; she might land somewhere else, and he’d have to change things around—but it would be the way they’d beat her. Jaime nodded along when he said as much; he’d begun to grasp it now, Robb thought, the idea of finding the levers that would move the enemy, and bring them where you wanted them.

“But you’ll need to do something about Oberyn,” Robb added thoughtfully, after a little more consideration.

“Oberyn Martell?” Jaime said.

“Yes,” Robb said. “He still wants vengeance on your house. If we beat Daenerys, it’ll mean securing the reign of House Lannister in the south, and your father will die peaceful and satisfied in his bed with his grandson on the throne. So when she comes, likely Oberyn will go over to her, and then Prince Doran will have to choose between supporting you, or cleaving to his brother whom he loves. And then we’ll be fucked, because if she’s got Dorne at her back, she’ll put the Dothraki there, and send them out raiding into the Reach. Even if we did manage to win, which won’t be easy, half the kingdom will starve before the spring. You have to mend the breach before she lands.”

“And how exactly do you think we’re going to do that?” Jaime demanded. “Oberyn’s been in King’s Landing for five years now, and he’s tried to get me into a duel to the death at least nine times; he’s as much as said to my father’s face that’s how he plans to get his vengeance. My father and Tyrion spend half their time maneuvering to keep it from happening,” he added sourly, and then looked back at Robb with a sudden brightening hope. “Should I let him? I could just kill him.”

“No, you can’t,” Robb said, and Jaime looked offended. “First of all, if you did kill him, Prince Doran would go over to her before she even sets sail, so what use is it? And second, he’ll scratch you with a poisoned knife three minutes into the first exchange, and you’ll be six days dying in the most horrible way you can. You’re going to have to give him a better way to do it.” 

“To kill me?” Jaime said sarcastically.

“He doesn’t really want to kill you,” Robb said. “He just wants to fuck your house as hard as he can. So…” He made an inviting gesture, up and down, and Jaime’s eyes nearly bulged. “Unless I’ve missed the mark by a great deal, he’ll be ready to take that offer, if you make it the right way.”

“You—you think I’m going to fuck Oberyn Martell?” Jaime said, almost strangled with rage.

“Mm,” Robb said. “Better not. Try it the other way round instead.” Jaime looked as though the top of his head might come off. “Or if you don’t like the idea, there is another way to do it.”

“Enlighten me!” Jaime said, all but snorting fire.

“Go to him and formally offer him your sincere apology for Elia’s death,” Robb said. “Acknowledge to his face that you failed her and her children as a Kingsguard and humbly beg his forgiveness—but I think you’ll find it easier getting him in bed, to be honest,” he added, stifling a laugh at Jaime’s expression. “And just look on the bright side of it.”

“What’s the bright side?” Jaime said, glaring at him.

Robb raised his eyebrows, and Jaime flushed with mortification. “Stark, you do know you are close enough for me to break your neck before that wolf gets me?”

“Oh, you’re not going to break my neck,” Robb said. He didn’t feel at all sleepy anymore. He slid his hand up to grip Jaime’s head and pulled him down to kiss him bitingly, sucking at his mouth. “But you are going to fuck me again.”

Jaime dragged in a short breath pained with lust and seized him. There was something nice about being manhandled by him; Robb let Jaime do the work of lifting him up by the thighs and carrying him over to the bed, and when he got there, Robb gripped him by the hair and pulled his head back to add, with a gleam, “Only this time, Lannister, you’ll do it properly. And don’t even think about coming until I tell you it’s all right.”

“Oh, Seven,” Jaime said, strangled, and fell upon him.

Chapter Text

The songs beat Robb back to Winterfell, so when he did get home, he paid thoroughly for his fun: Nymeria sentenced him to an entire week of punishment at her hands this time, indignant about his bad taste—”A Lannister?” she’d snarled, and he had to admit it was a deserved reproach—and she started with the third cock in the set and worked straight up to the tenth, one night after the other with his wrists tied in the small of his back and his head pushed down between Talisa’s thighs so he could use his mouth on her while Nymeria fucked him.

He had to call a halt in the middle of the last round and bend over the side of the bed so she could even work it inside him, and he was just gasping for breath and holding on the whole time while she fucked him with it, slowly. “Did you like it this much when you let Lannister put his cock in you?” Nymeria hissed in his ear low and excited as she slid it back into him. “Did you take it this well for him?”

Robb laughed a little and wheezed out, “I made him beg my pardon on his knees,” and after they were done, Nymeria demanded to know every detail of how he’d fucked Jaime while Talisa hid her face in a pillow. Nymeria got ever more glassy-eyed and flushed and bothered, and Talisa fled in mortification before he’d even finished telling them about the first night, saying stifled, “No! Go on! I’ll just—” before she ran away to the little room upstairs herself, and finally Nymeria lost control and lunged to take him down onto the bed and get on his cock and made him fuck her instead.

“You should tell your father to have a go at him, you know,” Robb said, grinning to himself afterwards, panting and sweaty: it felt like winning twice over.

“What?” Nymeria said.

“Tywin needs Dorne not to go over to Daenerys. So Oberyn could fuck Jaime in front of half the court, and Tywin wouldn’t be able to do a thing to put a stop to it. It would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it?” Robb said blandly. “His magnificent son, the one he’s so proud of, spreading his legs for all the world to know. Besides, it’s quite fun to fuck Jaime. He does so well with…a strong hand on the reins.”

Robb felt even more smug about it when those songs came North not a month later, before his banners had even finished mustering. Robb didn’t really believe Oberyn would have gone over to Daenerys: he’d come to visit little Elia three times, and he wasn’t a man who would trade the life of his innocent granddaughter to avenge the death of his innocent sister. He wasn’t going to set dragons on them, no matter how much he hated the Lannisters. But he deserved to have his revenge, and Jaime deserved to be fucked and humiliated, not least because he was so very hungry for it; Robb had worked out even before the end of the first night just how desperately Lannister wanted to be put on his knees. So why shouldn’t they both be happy? He’d thought Jaime might need a bit of help—but only a bit.

His smugness did take a dent just before he left, when the next jongleur turned up. “Ser Jaime sends me with his best wishes, your Grace, and in thanks for your honorable support, to entertain your court while you’re away,” Master Vervain said earnestly, with a deep graceful bow, while Robb stared at him. He looked like a doll someone had painted and dressed with care, with a soft full mouth and lovely large green eyes fringed by dark lashes, in a doublet of green velvet embroidered with gold, and dark green hose of fine wool and silk that clung to his slender calves and thighs, with elegant little tasseled gold cords tied just below the knee, and golden rings flashing on his fingers. All of the women in the court were staring at him with wide, fixed expressions. Even Talisa. Robb half wanted to laugh and half wanted to send Jaime a note demanding whether he thought he was an idiot.

And then Vervain said even more earnestly, “I took the liberty of composing a piece on the way here, in honor of your Grace’s father: A Lament for Honor,” and the whole hall hushed to total silence as he sang it, his voice soaring to the heights and filling the chamber from one end to another with the rippling music. It seemed a sound that couldn’t be made by human voice, as if the gods were whispering through him to join in a mourning that Robb hadn’t imagined being able to feel outside some deep choked part of his own heart, so strong the whole court was weeping with him by the end of it.

He said harshly to Vervain after, “You’ll stay as long as you like,” before he walked out of the hall, to go down to the crypts and kneel before his father’s tomb in silence, breathing hard and wet, back again in the dark woods, the unbearable knowledge burning in his head that Father was gone out of the world, that he’d never again see him or feel the weight of his hand on his shoulder or hear his quiet voice speaking, and that knowledge wasn’t any more bearable now than it had been then, it was only older, layered over with fresh pain and fresh joy, but still there below, buried too deep to ever uproot.

But he still wasn’t an idiot. “I’ll have to send the men on ahead, and catch up with the march a little later,” he told Talisa that night when he came back upstairs, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed; she gave a squeak of surprise and put her arms around his neck.

“Why?” she said, going stiff with the anxiety that he knew hadn’t left her since they’d heard about the battle at Meereen. “Have you heard some other news from—oh,” she gasped, as he tossed her onto the bed and climbed on to start kissing his way up from her ankles.

“No, nothing new yet,” he said. “But we know she’s not sailed yet, so I have a little time to spare, and I’m not leaving you alone in the keep with Vervain until we’re sure there’s another child on the way.”

“Robb!” Talisa said, in outraged protest, and he propped himself up on his elbow between her legs and gave her a narrow incredulous look, one brow raised, and she turned red and then snatched up a pillow and whacked him around the head even while he laughed and put his mouth on her, but while he was in her, their bodies moving together, she giggled and said a little breathlessly in his ear, teasing, “He is very pretty,” and he growled and nipped at her neck, and she laughed and kissed him.

“He’ll be at you the moment I’m gone, I’m sure,” Robb said afterwards, yawning, cuddling her against him. “He’s been promised a harp made of solid gold if he gets you in bed, or I don’t know that Lannister twat.”

“We can send him away,” Talisa said, more seriously. “I wouldn’t, Robb, not if you’d mind.”

But it was all wrong, as soon as he heard her say it. It would have just been that same selfish jealousy he’d tried to have before, that Yara had hauled up out of him and made him look at in shame. And he was half surprised to find—he didn’t even feel it anymore, as if it had just gone out of him somewhere.

He rolled himself up on his arm to look at Talisa. “Why shouldn’t you be entertained while I’m away on campaign?” he said, joking, and added more seriously, stroking her cheek, “I know you’ll be glad of anything to distract you, and I’ll be glad to know you have it. You’ll have to keep Nymeria from slitting his throat, though. It would be a crime.” She gave a small hiccup of laughter, but she was looking up at him a little surprised, as if she didn’t quite believe him. He asked, “Do you still mind?”

She shook her head. “I don’t. I truly don’t.” She gave a little spurt of laughter. “Not even Jaime Lannister.” She added, more serious, “Walda’s my sister. I love her, and you know I love Nymeria. And Goneril is a sweetheart; I know I’ll love her baby when it comes. I’m happy for Brandon and Wendel and Tral to have their brothers and sisters, and I love them all, too.”

“I know,” he said, low and soft. “I know you love them all. Not a woman in ten thousand could; my mother couldn’t love a single motherless child, but you love them all, because your heart’s as wide and open as the Sunset Sea, and that’s what’s made a family of them, of all of us. I am the luckiest man in the world, and the gods love me far better than I deserve, to have brought you to me.”

Her eyes were shining and wet, looking up at him, and he went back down into her arms and kissed her as her arms came around him. “Just come back to me,” she whispered, after they’d made love again, and her voice was full of tears. “Come back, Robb. I don’t care if you have to destroy her, and let them win in Meereen. I don’t care,” and he knew she wasn’t speaking to him, but to the gods, whom he knew she’d asked so many times to find a way to end the evil trade in Slavers’ Bay, telling them that this wasn’t a price she’d agree to pay.

#

He rode for the south at the head of forty thousand men, with a company of polybolos artillery that Master Gralicus and his sons had trained for him. Robb had already sent the machines themselves by sea, twenty of them, having harvested them from the Wall: he’d first had them built for the Night’s Watch, thinking of giants and mammoths turned into wights, and of clearing the top of the Wall if great numbers came scaling it to attack the defenders, but there was still no sign of a single wight anywhere south of the Milkwater, so he’d risked taking half of them away for now.

The Lannisters were making a thing they called a scorpion that could shoot a heavier bolt, although it needed winding each time; Jaime thought they’d have thirty of those ready in time. And on Robb’s advice, he’d dug up some old-fashioned ballistas out of the Red Keep and sent them to Dragonstone: slow to crank up, without very good aiming. Daenerys would be able to destroy them easily when she took the island, and then think that was the worst she had to fear.

Now Robb only had to hope that she’d take the bait they’d held out to her: Stannis had been grudgingly persuaded to take back Storm’s End, although he’d insisted on having his daughter married not to Tommen but to Crown Prince Robert—Robb had nearly strangled himself with the effort of not laughing when he’d first been told the name: he could just see Margaery suggesting it to Joffrey with limpid eyes, as a way to honor his late father—even though the little boy was not yet three, and Shireen was turned seventeen. But it had been Stannis’s price, to have his own heir on the throne next, and evidently Jaime had managed to persuade the rest of the Lannisters that it mattered enough to give in.

So Dragonstone was now manned only by a small force of crownsmen, and their forces were massing at Duskendale—although not too many yet, in case she passed over Dragonstone and went right at them instead, which was a thing Robb could imagine her doing. Surely she also wanted a fight, even if she wanted to be a savior as well: all her triumphs had come in battle. It was the one true worry he had: if she hit them fast and hard, chances were she’d win the first battle, and with one victory under her belt, she’d dig in much harder. He was grimly sure it would come to burning keeps and towns before the end, for it was plain enough she was ready to burn her enemies, and the innocent along with them, if she won thereby. But if burning didn’t win her anything, no matter how many times she tried it, she’d be more likely to give up and leave while she still had enough of an army to hold her kingdom in Essos.

Sansa and Tyrion Lannister were sending him ravens at every keep and tower along the kingsroad with the latest intelligence on the dragon queen’s movements. At Moat Cailin she’d set sail from Astapor; at the Dragon’s Wing Inn, near Fairmarket, her fleet was passing Volantis; when he reached Darry, she’d been seen by ships off Myr. And when he reached the Antlers, there was a raven message waiting for him from the Red Keep, which Lord Bar Emmon anxiously handed to him in the courtyard as he came in: Two fishermen off Sharp Point saw dragons flying north to Dragonstone, Tyrion had written, and Robb heaved a deep sigh of relief.

He left Dermont in command of the march and rode on ahead to Duskendale with his guard: he wanted to be on the coast now. He felt he’d taken the scent of the prey, sharp and smoky and bright on the wind, and he wasn’t worried about the Lannisters murdering him anymore. He was sure that when they’d heard that she was going for Dragonstone, just as he’d told them she would, he’d become a witch in their minds, too; they wouldn’t try to kill him now until after he’d beaten her for them.

He expected to find Jaime at Duskendale; it was a surprise to ride into the courtyard and be met by Tyrion Lannister instead. “My brother’s with the rest of our army, a few days behind me. I came on ahead because there’s been a single unexpected development,” he said, shaking Robb’s hand. “Which I confess was something of a relief to us all. When we first got the news that she really had gone to Dragonstone, Lord Mace suggested in all sincerity that perhaps you had magical powers to see the future. We did tell him he was being foolish, but we weren’t sure of it.”

“And what is it that I haven’t magically foreseen?” Robb said, dryly.

“Well, she does want to recruit support from among the aristocracy of Westeros,” Tyrion said. “But she’s decided to aim high,” and handed him the letter to read for himself, To Joffrey Baratheon, Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, from Daenerys Stormborn Targaryen, rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Queen of Meereen, Yunkai, and Astapor, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Greetings, followed by an invitation to come in person to Dragonstone, under a guarantee of safe conduct, to bear witness to the might of the rightful queen’s forces, and decide if he truly wished to be her enemy. “You’ve got one yourself,” Tyrion added. “Sansa sent a raven to let me know: it was sent to Winterfell.”

“She can’t be serious,” Robb said, incredulous as he read. “Does she think we’ll come and she can just murder us and be done?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part,” Tyrion said. “She’s offering hostages.”

“What hostages would we possibly be willing to accept?” Robb said, with a snort, and then looked up from the letter and stared at him. “The dragons?”

Tyrion frowned at him. “Please stop doing that,” but Robb was already turning the sheet to see where she’d made the offer: one of her dragons to come and be chained in the Dragonpit, until she returned Joffrey safely, and a careful and reasonable exchange laid out step by step at the beginning and the end.

“Gods, she means it,” Robb said, and laughed aloud, almost helpless with relief. “Oh, I’ll have her.”

“That’s rather optimistic of you,” Tyrion said, eyeing him sidelong. “The only possible reason she’d make this offer is because she thinks her forces are so overwhelming that one good look at them really will scare us into surrender.”

“Aye, you’re right, I’m sure,” Robb said. “And that’s why. She’s making this offer because she thinks she’s invincible. That’s a mistake she can’t afford to make.” He handed back the letter. “We’ll accept. I want to meet her, and have a look at the dragons and the Dothraki: that’ll make our chances still better. But I’m not taking Joffrey along,” he added. “You can come instead.”

“I don’t mean to impugn my nephew’s deep familial loyalty,” Tyrion said, “but I don’t know that he wouldn’t decide that he’d rather kill one of the dragons than get me back.”

“We’ll settle for one, and it’ll be in the keeping of my men,” Robb said, dryly.

#

There was one other unexpected development, though: she meant to take them back to Dragonstone herself—on the other dragon. “Oh, shit,” Tyrion said, a little faintly, and Robb had to admit, looking up at the smoldering-eyed beast from the ground, with the red glow behind its teeth and inside its nostrils, and the stink of sulfur and smoke acrid and biting in his nose, that her idea of scaring them into surrender by showing them the dragons wasn’t entirely mad. “I think you’ll have to wait for me here,” Robb said to Grey Wind, kneeling before him to stroke his head and scratch behind his ears; the wolf licked his face roughly and gave a whine. “Keep him with you,” he told Dermont, quietly. “If she does something to me, he’ll let you know it; kill the other dragon as quick as you can, and then follow where your nose leads you. You know my plans.”

Dermont nodded, worried and anxious, and Robb smiled at him and gripped his shoulder, encouraging, not letting the quailing in his belly show, and turned back to the monstrous black wing waiting for him to climb up, under that hot and glowing eye, to where the silver-haired woman waited, cool and regal and untroubled by the bows and spears pointed towards her.

“Out of curiosity, is there a trick to staying on?” Tyrion asked, as he settled himself uneasily.

“Don’t let go,” said the Unsullied man sitting at Daenerys’s back, unsmiling and humorless.

But oddly, sitting on the dragon didn’t feel so insecure to Robb as it had seemed to look at it from below: the spikes along the back weren’t in a single rigid spine, but spread around, and they even shifted a bit so he could settle himself in between them. The scales of the dragon’s hide were a little rough, and gripped at the leather of his trousers. Once he was seated, he felt more or less as though he’d been fixed into place, and then the dragon was moving, a lurching, galumphing, awkward gait that sparked a dozen ideas in Robb’s head if he could only get the beasts down on the ground—which all fell away with the earth as the dragon heaved itself up, one, two, three wing-strokes and was flying, all awkwardness gone, an impossible roaring rush of air and speed.

It was already breathtaking, the world streaming away beneath them, and then as the dragon turned north for Dragonstone, it dipped, a moment where Robb felt as though he was flying himself, weightless, and he whooped with involuntary glee. Daenerys turned her head around to look at him with surprise; he couldn’t help grinning back at her. “Can he do it again?” he shouted to her against the wind.

“Stark, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d very much like to stab you right now,” Tyrion said calmly, from up ahead of him.

Robb didn’t care; it was wonderful. When at last they landed—at last, it was nonsense; they’d flown across sixty miles of sea in a few hours—his legs almost wouldn’t bear his weight; he slid off the dragon and leaned against its side laughing a little drunkenly. “And I thought reindeer were fast,” he said to Daenerys, as she climbed down herself.

She plainly had meant to come the queen over them, and be stern and commanding, but her mouth fought her; the corners twitched, trying to make a smile of amusement. “My children are impressive,” she said, coolly, trying to rescue it, but he spoiled everything for both of them: he stared down at her determined face, which she’d lifted towards him a little, aglow with challenge, and instantly the only thing he could think of was what it would be like to fuck on the dragon. She frowned a little up at him and then plainly realized exactly what he was thinking, and oh, she’d never tried it; her eyes went wide and she stared up at him. And then Tyrion cleared his throat very loudly and was glaring at Robb in real outrage, which was, he had to admit, entirely deserved.

But he couldn’t help thinking about it, because now Daenerys couldn’t help thinking about it, and there wasn’t any way for either of them to stop. If he asked her, he was sure she’d take insult for it, because she’d wish to feel insulted, and that would give her cause to unleash too much violence, too soon in the campaign. And she wasn’t going to ask him, because she plainly thought he’d pretend he didn’t want it, so he could triumph over her.

So instead the idea of it was there the entire time, every minute he was in the same room as her, and she kept trying to be haughty and domineering as she commanded the Dothraki and the Unsullied to parade before them, and then one of the dragons would roar and spread its wings in view, and he’d look at her without thinking, and she’d catch his eye and color would come sweeping over her cheeks.

And she was so furious with him and herself for spoiling the show that he couldn’t help seeing clearly that it was all a show, her best efforts to keep her own crown jammed tight down on her head in front of them with both her hands. Oh, she was hungry to rule; she wouldn’t bend to anyone for longer than it took her to cut out their hearts. But he’d also had her to rights even when she’d been on the other side of the world: she wanted to be loved by those who obeyed her, not feared or hated. He could tell that she’d have been glad to take the crown off in the evenings and gather by the fire with her people, and laugh and be made happy, like a decent person, by the happiness of those around her. He couldn’t help thinking that Talisa would like her: she liked stroking sharp-toothed things, and Daenerys would surely like her, too. Her own dearest friend was the gentle soft-voiced woman at her side, who spoke a dozen tongues and made every dramatic heraldic announcement warm with love every time one came out of her mouth. It made it impossible to hate her.

“Have you lost your mind?” Tyrion said, cornering him after two days of it, in the chamber Robb had been given on the outer wall of the keep, right where he could see the favorite sunning place of the dragons upon the cliffs. The smaller one, Viserion, was sprawled there now, and the Dothraki were riding in waves back and forth upon the wide open meadow below.

“Don’t start,” Robb said; it was only worse because he knew it was justified. “If I could be talked out of it, I’d be married to Roslin Frey. And I’d probably have killed you all eight years ago and been King of the Seven Kingdoms myself, so you haven’t a right to complain!”

“Daenerys wants to kill us all right now!” Tyrion said. “Suddenly you want to let her do it just because she’s beautiful?”

“She doesn’t want to kill us all, and the trouble’s not that she’s beautiful!” Robb said. Tyrion eyed him with an expression that conveyed that he couldn’t conceive of any other reason to desire a woman. “The trouble is I like her!” Tyrion grimaced: of course that was what he was really worried about, and with good reason.

After Tyrion had gone, Robb leaned brooding over the balcony railing, looking down at the sleeping dragon, impossible and gleaming and beautiful; even the Dothraki were beautiful, from this far up, the great herd of horses streaming over the land. And Daenerys was beautiful, and there was laughter and kindness and courage behind the beauty, which was far more than anyone could ever have said of Joffrey, and the first time he beat her in the field, a dozen slave markets would open across the sea at her back.

It wasn’t satisfying anymore that he could see what to do, how he’d do it. She did think she was invincible, and far worse than that, for her sake, so did all her men. The Dothraki looked down at him and Tyrion with smiling contempt, off the backs of their horses with their light grassland shoes, which would be coming off at once in the mud around the Trident, and in their own thin leather boots, which let them grip their stirrups for better momentum and to stand in their saddles, and which would be losing them their toes when he got them to chase him across the river and into an ice storm in the foothills of the Vale.

And the dragons raised their heads five times an hour to watch the horses run on the beach far below them, but they didn’t twitch an eyelid whenever someone moved above them, and they eagerly searched out flat dark stones to sleep on in the sun. He thought it likely he’d get the two smaller ones with a single trap, if he did it carefully. And then she’d only have the one left, and she’d grow far more cautious or far more reckless, and either one would do.

He sighed and then gave a jerk as a shadow fell over the balcony, and the enormous black dragon came down off the roof above in a lurching jump to cling like a bat to the craggy wall of the keep, so close the blazing heat off its head came in a sulfurous wave over the balcony. Daenerys was sitting on its back, and she looked at Robb with a rueful expression, the cool and haughty mask taken off and the crown laid aside with it, and she said, wryly, “I like you, too.”

“Oh, this is a dreadful idea,” he said, resignedly, and then he climbed up onto the railing and took the hand she held out to him and got on just behind her, the spikes and scales of the hide snugging in to grip around his legs, and the dragon let go and went tumbling away from the wall into the open air, falling free until it snapped its wings out and caught a rising draft with a roar. Robb was already kissing her throat and her jaw wildly, working his hands down under the skirts of her coat and into the soft white leather trousers she wore, desperate to get his fingers on her.

She was kissing him back, letting her head lean against his shoulder and tipping her face up towards him, her fingers tangling in his hair and pulling his head down, shuddering as he managed to slip his fingers over her cunt, stroking over the soft folds from outside, rubbing at her clit, and the first slickness was already coming, letting him ease his fingers in. “Oh, gods,” he groaned, and pressed her forward onto his hand, getting her hips up so he could get underneath her and hold her on his lap, pressed down on his cock; he was already hard in his trousers.

“Oh,” she said, low and hungry, putting her own hand over his, pressing him harder against her, her hips moving to meet him.

But though she was eager, and wet, Robb couldn’t—make her go; it was like trying to start a fire with damp wood and no kindling. She didn’t seem to mind at all; she went on moving against his hand dreamily, as if she was enjoying herself, and she sighed with pleasure when he stroked over her clit, when he got his hand inside her clothes and cupped her breast, but he knew there was more to be had, if she didn’t, and it was driving him mad not to be able to get at it. He kissed her and said, “How far can he fly, without tiring?”

Daenerys laughed. “He can fly forever. They can sleep on the wing.”

“Good,” he said, growling, and settled in for the long slow work of getting it done, like rolling a stick between his palms to ignite a few strands of dried grass, getting a spark to light. He took his fingers out and laved them in his mouth, made them as wet as he could, and put them back in and started touching her more gently, just over the surface of her cunt, rubbing and pressing her clit steadily with his other hand, careful not to chafe her.

The dragon flew onward, climbing and gliding and climbing again, and Robb started matching his strokes to the flight, going at her with more vigor as the dragon beat his way up, then easing back to slow gentle teasing caresses, and when the sun started to descend, the sky going molten red and gold into the ocean to the west, he waited for the next climb, and then pushed his fingers deep inside her, her cunt gloriously wet and slippery, and said low in her ear, “Clench down on them, hard as you can,” and pressed at her clit and rubbed it hard while he stroked his fingers deep, in and out of her, and she gasped once, and then gasped again, a frantic edge coming into the sound, as if she’d finally caught the hint of it herself, the idea of something more out there, and he pressed deeper, stroking back and forth wildly; gods he wished he could get his mouth on her, and then she gave a small pained sound and another and then was jerking against him, small violent spasms that shook her whole body as she cried out, “Oh, oh,” and the dragon roared beneath them, a shattering noise that shook through Robb’s entire body, and she fell back against him shivering and gasping, gripping his hands furiously tight against her.  

They didn’t get off the dragon when it landed, back on the island; Robb got her up and lay her back on the warm hide of the shoulder and got her trousers down just enough so he could put his mouth on her; she writhed and clutched at his head with both hands as she moaned. He brought her a second time after less work, and pulled himself up while she was still shuddering and got his cock in her, her thighs pushed up, her whole body spectacularly hot against him, and he fucked her wildly through the climax and let himself go only as she went limp.

The dragon took them back to the keep, landing clinging to the wall just to one side of the terrace of her own chambers, and Robb got off and carried her in to the bed. She drowsily pulled him in with her. He woke up in the early sunlight with her snuggled still fast asleep in his arms, warm and sweet, and he groaned a little and pushed his hand into his hair: now what was he going to do?

She stirred against him and raised her head from his chest, smiling and gleaming-eyed, pleased as a well-fed dragon herself; he looked at her with helpless dismay, but her smile only broadened. “Do you really need any more reasons to support me instead of the Lannisters?” she said, a little whimsical.

“I’m not here to support the Lannisters!” he said, and got out of the bed, going to stand at the balcony doors. He was glad of the cold air coming in; it felt good on his overheated skin. She sat up, frowning a little. “I hate Joffrey with every breath in my body,” he said. “I’d gladly strangle him with my bare hands. And I do like you. Even more now,” he added, dry. “But that’s not a reason to crown you.”

“If I grant you the throne of the North,” she began, and stopped as he jerked his hand in sharp frustration.

“You can’t grant me anything!” Robb said. “You’re not my queen! You’re not the queen of a single inch of Westeros. How could you be? No one wants you. You haven’t the allegiance of a single lord. You’re just a woman from Essos who’s turned up off our coast with a horde of Dothraki and three dragons. The only claim that gives you is if you win. And you won’t.”

She had her mouth pressed into a thin hard line, anger bright in her eyes and pale in her cheeks. “You sound very confident,” she said, coolly.

“Aye,” Robb said flatly. “I do.” It wasn’t bragging, and he thought she knew it; a frown was starting between her brows. “I was almost certain that I could beat you before I came; I hadn’t been here for a day before I knew I would. That doesn’t give me joy. I don’t want to tear you apart. But I will. You ask me why I’m helping the Lannisters. I’m not. I’m defending my home, against a foreign invader who wants to bring a hundred thousand murdering brigands and rapers into our lands, and set dragons on her enemies if they don’t like it. How dare you ask me to yield to you? To lie down and let you do that to my people, to my kinsmen in the south? I should die a hundred times over, first. I’ve already had to feed and house thirty thousand starving men and women and children who washed up in the North from the other cities you’ve conquered. The ones you’ve now abandoned, like toys you’re tired of playing with.”

“I have not abandoned them,” she broke in, with fire coming into her eyes.

“No? How do you mean to rule in Slavers’ Bay and in Westeros at the same time? It’s a month to send a message one way!”

She got out of the bed and stalked over to look up at him. “I mean to open trade between them. I destroyed the slavers’ army, and I’ve appointed a man I trust—”

“Who’ll be overthrown by a new army of slavers, the first battle you lose,” Robb said. “What then? Will you go back to the mess you made, that won’t stay sorted? Or will you stay here? A good, clean fight to be had, one you’re sure you can win. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? And you’ll tell yourself you’ll fix things back in Essos as soon as you’ve taken the Iron Throne.”

She paused, silenced.

“Only you won’t,” he said. “We’ll kill your dragons, and destroy your armies of Dothraki, and every one of the slave markets will open back up again, and everything you’ve ever done will just be gone. Don’t ask me why I’m standing in your way. Why are you trying to invade us? No one’s forcing you!”

“This is my home, too!” she flared. “My house united Westeros. We ruled for hundreds of years. The Iron Throne was made by Aegon’s dragons. We didn’t choose to leave, we didn’t choose to go to Essos. All of your fathers were oathbreakers who murdered my brother Rhaegar and his children. They stabbed my father in the back, hunted me and Viserys for years, tried to murder me and my unborn child—”

“Do you want to compare injuries?” Robb said. “Your brother took my aunt Lyanna from her family and her betrothed, though he was already wed. Your father murdered my grandfather and my uncle, tortured them to death at the foot of his throne. He ordered Jon Arryn to hand over my father and Robert Baratheon so he could murder them, too. And Joffrey’s no better, Tywin Lannister isn’t, but my father was. And I’m trying to be. What about you?”

She jerked away from him and went to the railing herself, standing with her hands gripping onto it and facing into the wind, rigid. She didn’t move or speak for a long moment, and then she turned back to him, a light of battle in her face. “I do mean to be better. I invited you and the Lannisters here because I don’t want to kill you, whether I have a cause for vengeance or not. My officers told me I shouldn’t let you see so much of my forces or my dragons. But I chose to do it anyway, in hopes of persuading you not to fight. I don’t want to burn and destroy among my own people. But I am the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. I have a right to pursue my claim. And if you also care about the lives of the people of Westeros, and not just your own pride, then I’ll offer you a bargain. You say you can defeat my army. You’re certain of it. Prove it. Convince me and my officers that you’d win, and I’ll go back to Essos. And if you can’t—you’ll bend the knee yourself. As King Torrhen once did,” she finished.

“And how am I to do it? By telling you all my best plans of battle, so I can’t use them after?” Robb said, dry.

“If you won’t show me what you can do, why should I believe you?” she said, cool and challenging, but even before she spoke, the idea was catching in his mind. It was a just demand, in exchange for the risk she’d run herself, asking them here and trying to find a way out of war. And more than that: it was the answer to Talisa’s prayers. A chance to send Daenerys back to Essos, without having to destroy her power; a chance to keep the slave markets closed.

“All right,” he said, slowly. “You showed me yours, I’ll show you mine. We’ll do it from the west, instead of the east. I’ll lay out my forces, and you’ll make a landing anywhere on the western coast. And then we’ll fight it out on the Painted Table, instead of the field, and see what you think of your chances afterwards.”

#

The Dothraki started out smirking; Mormont and Selmy were more serious, but even they weren’t truly worried. Tyrion was; he’d put up a vociferous protest against the idea at all. “This is all just because you want to fuck her!” he’d snapped, and when Robb had smirked a little bit, he’d added furiously, “again,” and now he was sitting next to Robb at the table with a grim expression and an entire jug of wine, which he’d commandeered entirely for his own consumption.

Robb laid out his forces alongside the edge of the great sprawling map: not exactly the numbers he expected to have, not exactly the companies he expected to have, but roughly on the order, after her men agreed that they accepted his numbers. Next to each company, he made a small token out of paper, marked with a symbol; then he put matching tokens face-down at the various keeps and holdfasts he meant to defend on the western coast: they’d agreed that he’d turn them over and reveal his positions as she met his forces or scouted them.

In fact the western landing favored Daenerys and her men far better than Dragonstone did; after he’d laid out his forces, they chose Oakenshield Island as their staging point, off the coast of the Reach: a sensible idea, to get the Dothraki into the fields of the south, where they’d be able to move fast and far and wide.

They could see that he’d put a token at the keep of Horn Hill, so they knew they couldn’t go straight at Highgarden without being flanked; after a quick mutter amongst themselves, she set twenty thousand Dothraki to ride upon the smaller keep in force, first.

“How long do you expect to hold it against the siege?” Daenerys said, her lofty mask back on and her voice cool, when her men had finished laying out their own markers around it.

“Will you offer terms?” Robb said.

“I’ll give your men three days to surrender,” she said.

“Then I’ll hold it three days,” he said, and turned over the token in the keep: he had less than fifty men in the garrison. “How many men are you leaving behind to hold it?”

She looked annoyed, and Mormont pointed to the second token that Robb had put into the foothills of the Red Mountains, just to the southwest. “I’m going to fly a pass overhead and see how many men you have there,” she said. 

Robb shrugged. “They’ll be hiding in the caves and niches, but all right.” He turned over the token: a thousand men.

“I’ll leave two thousand of my own,” she said, and sent the rest of her army marching onward to Highgarden again. As soon as she was a week further down the road, he had the ironborn fleet sail up the Mander and drop another five thousand men on the banks at her back; the company hit her supply lines, slowing her advance, and went back to besiege Horn Hill themselves in turn.

“Will you surrender the keep back to us?” he said.

“No,” she said, coldly; she couldn’t, of course, since that would put her back at the same problem of having a flanking force aimed at her advance on Highgarden.

“And how are you defending it?” he asked.

“There’s two thousand men inside the walls, your Grace,” Barristan Selmy said pointedly. “Horn Hill is a strong fortress. That garrison can hold it for months.”

“Mm. That sounds as though none of you know about the secret passage from the Whitevale Falls that comes out in the cellars,” Robb said. They all stared at him. “The keep belongs to House Tarly. A son of the house is with the Night’s Watch. He mentioned it to me once.” He took their markers off the board and put his own back in the keep, rearranged his tokens and put fresh ones back in face down again: one for the garrison in the keep, one in the hills, and another aimed directly at the flank of her main force, threatening again to make them halt the march towards Highgarden. Then he moved another one of his tokens out of Oldtown and another out of Brightwater Keep onto the roseroad, marching them towards Horn Hill from the south, another small threat, another irritating little check on her advance.

She had a hasty conference with her officers; then she said, “I’m sending a force of thirty thousand Dothraki down the roseroad towards your forces there, and another ten thousand men to retake Horn Hill. They can reach you in two days,” she added, challenging, as if daring him to dispute the speed.

He only nodded, unsurprised: she wanted to be done with all these stupid distractions, keeping her from the real battle up ahead at the great fortress, the shining prize on its hill; by now she intended to crush these small irritations quickly and completely. “The forces on the road are all light infantry and scouts.” He turned over the tokens and showed them: only three thousand men on the road from the south, and a thousand men in the flanking force. “They’re all retreating into the foothills to join the rest of the force there. I think they’ll be able to fall back before the Dothraki can reach them. And I’ve a thousand men garrisoning the keep now, with all the supply they took from your own lines. They have orders to hold it as long as they can. Are you going to build siege weaponry?”

“We don’t need siege weaponry,” she said. “If you refuse to surrender, I’ll fly back with my dragons and burn down the gates of the keep.” She moved the dragons to Horn Hill, and reached out and took his markers out of the keep.

“And how many men are you leaving to hold it now, since I’ve seven thousand men in the hills, and you’ve destroyed the gates?” he said, when she’d finished, and they all paused, hesitating, realizing too late that they’d just taken down what were now their own fortifications.

“I’ll leave ten thousand men,” she said through her teeth, after they’d discussed it over, quietly, and put the markers there.

“Those are Dothraki,” he said. “I’ve poisoned the grain in the stores. What are their horses eating?”

“Grass,” one of the Dothraki men said coldly.

“Where are you getting grass?” Robb said. “The land around the keep is rocky. It’s half an hour’s ride from Horn Hill to the nearest grazing land, and that’s the Hornvale, up in the hills, here.” Robb pointed to the narrow valley, surrounded by higher hills. “If you do try to ride up there to graze, none of those men will come back.”

“Then we’ll send them more grain, from our supply,” Daenerys said.

“We can’t, your Grace,” Mormont said to her low, before he could. “It won’t get to them. His men are controlling the hills.”

She compressed her mouth, and after another conference, she said, “Fine. I’ll use my dragons to burn out your forces,” with an air of defiance: angry that he’d forced her to do something so distasteful, but of course it had to be done. She moved the dragon tokens to face the small force on her flank, first.

“All right,” Robb said steadily. “My men will fall back as soon as they get word from the advance guard that the dragons are coming.” He handed her the marker for the flanking force, and then started seven different markers moving back into the hills, retreating in opposite directions from one another.

“That’s not going to work for long,” Daenerys said dryly, moving the dragons after them in a far larger gulp of land.

“How long will it be?” he asked.

“What?” Daenerys said.

“You’re going to be hunting through the foothills of the Red Mountains to burn out seven thousand men, who are scattered around camped in dozens of caves and moving light on foot,” Robb said. “How long is it going to take you?”

“You haven’t seen dragonfire,” she said. “It’ll take me a week.” 

She was inviting him to challenge her again, but he said nothing, only gestured a hand for her to proceed. After she’d put the dragons at Horn Hill and gathered up all his markers nearby, he reached out and turned over the token he had set on the road in front of Highgarden at the very start of the campaign, on the southern bank of the Mander, now only a single day’s march away from where the rest of her own forces were encamped. And then one at a time he turned over the matching tokens beside his companies: sixty thousand pikemen and twenty thousand heavy cavalry from the Reach and the Westerlands, fifteen thousand Stormlands longbowmen, ten thousand Northmen with axes and shortbows; smaller companies of scouts.

“They’ll hit your army before the dragons and the forty thousand men you sent south can return,” he said. “That’s the rest of the Dothraki gone, and the Unsullied,” and he swept the markers off the table as they all stood motionless watching, and Tyrion let out an explosive breath and said, “Oh, fuck you, Stark,” aloud, and sloshed wine into his cup.

Robb offered to let them fight it over another time. This time they tried to start from Faircastle and go at him through the Westerlands, which was a much worse idea to begin with, and they were primed to go all wrong from the last round. They marched straight on Casterly Rock and ignored the tokens he’d put at Kayce and Oxcross, treating them like distractions, but this time he had forty thousand men mustered at each place, and he dropped another thirty thousand at Lannisport by ship and smashed her force from all three sides against the walls of the Rock. When she tried to send the dragons to burn the heavy infantry who were slaughtering the cornered Dothraki from the north, Robb silently pointed Mormont to a handwritten note he’d left folded on the table right there; Mormont opened it and his face went rigid.

“What is it?” she said sharply.

“Thirty lightweight ballista, mounted on the northern curtain wall, under wrappings,” Mormont said, low. “Loaded with poisoned and barbed harpoons,” and none of them said anything; they only looked at the three tokens for the dragons, flying low over the field to burn men on the ground, exposed completely to the fire from that enormous towering wall. 

Robb didn’t bother to take them off the field. “This doesn’t mean that we’ll win, if you do invade,” he said, as Daenerys raised her eyes from the table to look at him. “I’ll be the first to tell you that wargames aren’t war. And I’ve just given you the single greatest advantage that we had. Now you know, these men know—” he gestured around to all of them, “that it won’t be easy. Not even with dragons and Dothraki. As soon as I’ve gone, they’ll tell you what I already know. That you can’t win this war gently. You’ll only be wasting the lives of your own loyal men if you try. You’ll have to burn lords in their keeps and smallfolk in their towns; the forests and fields where our fighters will hide. You’ll have to hunt down my children, so I’ll surrender for you to burn me in their place.” She flinched a little. “Then men will give way to you, out of fear. And if that’s what you’d do, to win; if you’re willing to burn children alive to be queen of a people who hate you and fear you, to make us into slaves, then I’ll be glad to die fighting you to the last, even if that’s all that I can do.”

Her face was a blank mask, unmoving, her feelings locked away beneath it out of sight. Her men didn’t seem to know what she was thinking either; they were looking at her sidelong, and Missandei had lowered her eyes and was staring down at the floor, her own face even more blank, a placid empty bowl of water nothing like the usual gentle warmth that glowed from within it.

Then Tyrion put down his jug on the table and said, “On the much brighter side, there is something more that I can do, at least if you don’t have your heart set on burning us all to death.” She looked at him. “I understand that you’re interested in opening the ports of Westeros to your eastern cities. But as I’m sure you already know, conquest isn’t actually very good for trade—no matter how well-intentioned or justified.” Daenerys’s lips tightened. “Might I suggest a nice friendly trade agreement instead? I’m prepared to make the terms extremely generous.”

She hesitated, frowning a little, and Tyrion pressed the advantage. “Burned fields don’t produce much grain for anyone. Wouldn’t you rather have a share of the harvest to take back to the hungry people of Meereen, instead of having to find a way to feed the hungry people of Westeros, too? Not to mention all the other difficulties of ruling an empire on two continents. I won’t claim that my father’s a kind and generous man, but he is an extremely competent administrator. Do you have someone in mind to replace him with, if you did take the throne? Are any of these gentlemen versed in the Westerosi legal code? The twenty-seven separate taxation tables granted by the crown? The schedule for the maintenance of the kingsroad, and the lords responsible for the upkeep of the other highways of the realm? I could go on, but it does get rather tiresome.” He spread his hands. “Perhaps we could discuss the matter over the course of several boring weeks in a much less martial setting?”

#

“Just so we’re clear on this, Stark, I hate you more than words can possibly express, and I hope she does set you on fire,” Tyrion said to him afterwards, pouring himself another cup of wine and lying down prostrated on the low bench in the chamber between their rooms.

“We might get out of this without a war at all!” Robb said.

“Or we might all be burnt to little cinders before the week is out!”

“I don’t believe it,” Robb said. “The woman who could do that wouldn’t have been here in the first place; she’d just have started in on it.”

Tyrion raised his head glaring. “We’re going to agree right now that of the two of us, I am far more competent to judge the depths to which the ambitious men and women of the world are prepared to sink in order to achieve their deepest desires, and then you’re going to fuck off! You’ve just gambled all of Westeros and all our lives on your cock. You really had better be as good a lover as the jongleurs say.”

“Just ask your brother,” Robb said a bit snidely, which wasn’t very nice of him, but he couldn’t resist; Tyrion only glared harder.

But later that day, Robb watched Daenerys out flying from the balcony of his rooms, the great dragon going in vast sweeping circles around the island, as if she were trying to fly her way out of a trap, and he did wonder what she’d decide. He didn’t believe she’d start in on a murderous war right away; at the very least, she’d first lay one demand after another on Tyrion, and try to make him balk: to persuade herself there was something he wouldn’t give her, that she had to have. And Tyrion would sort that out; he’d not give her anything to go to war over, not even rudeness or irritation, and by the time they’d finished negotiating, she’d unwillingly begin to like him, too, as Robb did himself, despite far more immediate cause for hatred.

Robb would have liked to speak to Selmy or Mormont, to know more of their minds. Mormont had proven himself an honorless cunt before now, but Father had always spoken of Barristan Selmy as a man of honor. Surely he wouldn’t advise Daenerys to follow a course of slaughter against his own countrymen. But she also had a pack of Dothraki warlords at her back, who’d want to make her lead them to plunder; perhaps they’d persuade her that it had all been a trick, a game, that the real war wouldn’t be anything like it.

He couldn’t help but feel Tyrion’s reproof, and worry that he had taken a foolish risk, giving her the priceless knowledge that she could lose. Robb didn’t think he’d done it just because he’d fucked her. But of course he didn’t want to fight Daenerys anymore now that he’d lain with her, held her in his arms. He didn’t know how he’d bear it, making plans to tear her apart, to slaughter her dragons, to bring her tumbling down out of the sky to smash upon the ground. 

He slept uneasily, and woke for the last time with the sky still dark outside and half of it blotted out with solid black, except for a red gleam like hot coals glowing beneath the scales of the great dragon’s hide, one eye of flame turned to look at him. Daenerys was sitting on the edge of the bed near him; she was looking out through the balcony door without seeing anything. He sat up, resting his arms over his knees, waiting. She said, softly, “When my brother gave me to Drogo, all those years ago…I protested. I didn’t want to marry him. I wanted to go home.” There was a sharp longing in her voice; he felt it sting in his own throat, familiar.

“I wanted that, too,” he said. “When I went south. I meant to get my father back, and my sisters, and we’d all come home together. My brothers would be waiting. But by the time I came home…it wasn’t there anymore. Our keep had been sacked. My brothers and my little sister were lost. And my father was in the crypt,” he finished, in little more than a whisper.

“It’s still yours,” she said. “It’s still your place, where you belong. You’ve rebuilt.”

“Aye, we have,” Robb said. “We’ve made it home again. But it wasn’t the walls we had to rebuild. It was our family. And…it’s still not the one we lost. It’s good. We’re happy. But I’d trade my crown for a handful of groats if that would give me my father back. My brothers and my sister.”

“I watched my brother die in front of my face,” Daenerys said after a moment. “Viserys put a sword to my belly. To my unborn child. So Drogo killed him, and I didn’t stop him. I didn’t say a word. I watched…” There was a blind, stricken look in her face. He flinched and put a hand out to her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “He was the last kin I had in the whole world. And my child died anyway, and my womb died with him. I’ll never have a family again. I can only ever be a mother of dragons.”

He wanted to take her in his arms, but she was ramrod stiff, facing away from him, and he didn’t feel she would welcome it. He didn’t know what anyone could say to comfort that; still less what he could say, whining to her about his father gone, him with his mother and his sister at home, his brother safe and happy, his four wives and seven healthy children: a rich man complaining to a beggar about the loss of half his fortune, while his vaults were still brimming with gold.

He hesitated, and then said slowly, “I don’t know if this would mean anything to you. I don’t see any reason it should. But… you had one other kinsman in Westeros. Though he didn’t know it himself, and he was lost many years ago.” He chose the words carefully, not wanting to give her even a moment of some false hope. “My brother, Jon Snow. Only he wasn’t, not by birth. He was my cousin, and your nephew. The son that Lyanna Stark bore to your brother Rhaegar…”

It did seem to mean something to her, for she’d turned and was staring at him with her eyes wide and stricken. So he went on, “He’s been missing in the far North, a place haunted by wights, for seven years now. He’s surely dead, and my brother Bran with him. We’ve long since given up any hope of their return. But he’s still my brother and always will be, living or dead. And if you’d want to claim us as kin, through that tie, I’d be glad to claim you so.”

She jerked her head away. She didn’t say anything, but even in the dim light he could see her swallowing. After a moment, he added, to lighten it a little, “You could even come to Winterfell as a guest sometime, instead of a conqueror. If you’d like to meet the rest of his family.”

She gave a small half-laugh, with only a little wavering in it, and managed to sound a little wry. “I’m not sure all of your family is likely to be as enthusiastic as you are. Or is your wife really that long-suffering?”

“What, Talisa? She’s more likely to try and steal you for herself,” he said with an amused snort as Daenerys looked round at him half-incredulous, her brows rising. “She left her home in Volantis and traveled all the way here to Westeros because she couldn’t bear to live in a slave city. She’s been praying for your safety and success ever since we heard you’d freed the slaves in Yunkai and Meereen, all those years ago.”

Daenerys looked down at her hands, the amusement fading out of it. “I imagine her prayers have been different lately.”

“No one wants to lose their family,” Robb said gently. “She still regrets our being at odds. She fears that a war between us will mean all those slave markets opened again. No matter what happens.”

“She’s right, of course,” Daenerys said stiffly, after a moment. “I…I even told my lieutenant Daario to turn a blind eye to any markets that opened outside the city walls, instead of provoking another rebellion. Until I’d finished here, and could send back grain, and half my army…” She trailed off, going quiet. Because she knew now that she wasn’t going to be doing that anytime soon. She’d need every man she had here, to fight a long and terrible war she might well lose. And if she won it, she’d likely have scorched the earth of Westeros, and there’d not be any help to send.

They sat silently together as the sky outside slowly brightened. He didn’t think there was anything more to be said. It was for her to decide what she’d do, and what she could more easily bear to give up: her pride or her honor. “All right,” she said, finally, with decision. “Yes. I’ll let the Lannisters bribe me to go away. My bloodriders will understand,” she added dryly. “It’s what all the cities of Essos do, when a great khalasar appears on the horizon.”

He got off the bed and caught her hand, before she’d gone all the way to the balcony. “Thank you,” he said, softly, and kissed her hand. It occurred to him, ruefully, that it seemed unjust to them all that she could only make herself a worthy queen by going away and leaving Joffrey upon the throne.

She looked at him with fire coming back into her eyes, her chin lifting. “I’m not surrendering my claim, Robb Stark,” she said. “The Iron Throne was forged by Aegon’s dragons, and it is my right to take it back, even with fire and blood. But…I do believe you. Not that I’d lose,” she added, with a glint. “But that the most honorable lord of Westeros won’t bend the knee to me here, when I haven’t ruled well in the cities I’ve already taken.”

He swallowed around a sudden knot in his throat, to hear her call him so. That had been his father, to the world and in his own heart; he was sure he didn’t deserve the name, but he couldn’t help but be glad for it anyway, a treasure he would hold dear.

“I don’t want to burn you for that,” Daenerys said. “I do have to return to Meereen and set things right. But I don’t promise not to come back.”

Robb smiled at her wryly. “Then I’ll hope that if you ever do, I’ll be able to welcome you with open arms.”

She smiled back and went to the dragon; Robb stood in the balcony opening feeling the wind of its passage on his face, and breathed out a deep sigh from his belly before he turned back, intending to go and tell Tyrion he had a negotiation ahead of him, instead of a war: he’d be grateful to be woken up for that news.

But when Robb turned, he almost didn’t understand what he was seeing at first; it made no sense, so he thought his eyes were playing a trick on him in the still-dim light, making him see things, and then he froze, realizing it wasn’t a trick: there was someone there, standing at the back of the room in the shadow of the heavy wooden wardrobe.

He hadn’t brought Ice with him, but he had a broadsword by the bed; he took two steps and had the hilt in his hand, never taking his eyes off the figure, and then before he drew it, he said, almost without knowing why, “Arya?”

He was sure instantly as soon as he heard himself say it. She didn’t move or speak for another long moment, and then she came out of the shadow, walking up to the other side of the bed. He knew her, would have known her at a glance: she was older, but it was still her. She wasn’t blind: her grey eyes were clear and cool and hard as stone on his face. “How did you…what are you doing here? Are you—you’re all right? You’ve left the Faceless Men—” He made a move to go to her around the bed, but she shifted her weight, like some beast about to take flight, and he froze himself, remembering what Brienne had said: she just vanished. He stopped and stared at her across the bed instead, helplessly. Her own face was almost expressionless, a lake buried beneath a thick sheet of winter ice. She didn’t answer him, neither yes or no, but as he got over his surprise, he didn’t need an answer: it was too clear what she was doing here. “You’re here to kill Daenerys,” he said flatly.

“The Free Cities paid the Faceless Men,” she said. “Tywin paid too. And the rest of the slave masters. I was just waiting until you’d gone back. Tywin didn’t want us to,” she added, dryly.

“You were waiting?” he said.

She made a small annoyed shrug, something more like herself, like the girl he remembered making grimacing faces behind Sansa’s back. “I can’t kill her now, can I? Since she’s kin,” she said, with an irritated bite—irritated with him, for having taken away her prey, he realized, and gave a spurt of laughter, which got him a glare that only made him happier.

“Arya,” he said, and then he did come round the bed towards her, and she didn’t vanish; she stood wooden and angry, but she let him put his arms around her, and she even put her hands around behind his back, too, for a stiff moment. He let her go and took her by the shoulders, his eyes stinging. “You’re not going back to Braavos. You’re coming home with me.”

She gave a twitching like a horse trying to shake off flies. “You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know anything about me.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “You’re my sister. You’re a Stark of Winterfell. And you’re coming home and letting Mother howl at you for a week just like you deserve.”

“And what if I go to King’s Landing afterwards?” she said, coldly.

“I’m not trying to put a leash on you,” he said, quietly. “But that’s not what Father would have wanted. You know it’s not. He’d want you to come home to us.”

“What I want is Joffrey dead,” Arya said. “Cersei. Ilan Payne. Meryn Trant. The Hound. The Mountain. Tywin—”

“And then what?” Robb said, breaking into her litany, and she paused. “Then what, Arya? When you’ve killed all of these people. What is it you want to do with your life, after?” She was silent. “I want them all dead, too. But not nearly as much as I want you living. And happy.”

“Do you think I’ll be happy at Winterfell?” she said. “Who was it I was supposed to marry, again? Waldron Frey? Did you have another match in mind for me?” There was a cutting edge in her voice.

“I’ll have enough trouble finding matches for my own children without bothering about you,” Robb said. “Arya, Sansa’s the Hand of the King, Rickon’s gone to live in the wilds on Bear Island, and I’ve got a crown and four wives and seven children. None of us are doing anything we were meant to do. It doesn’t matter. You matter.”

“How did you get four wives?” Arya demanded, screwing up her face.

“It’s a long story,” Robb said. “Come home and I’ll tell you.” She glared at him. “I don’t want you back to use as a pawn. I love you. I’ve missed you. I’ve worried about you. I want you to come home. Please.”

Her shoulders sank a little the way they always had when someone had pulled her along with the bit in her teeth all the way until she’d had to give in, and she said grudgingly, “I’ll think about it,” but he was sure that what she meant was, she’d turn up at the gates in a month or a year, and pretend she’d only just then decided. And when he put his arms around her again, she even let herself lean into him and rest her head against his chest and shut her eyes.

Chapter Text

Daenerys went back to Essos two months later, with Barristan Selmy left behind to rule Dragonstone in her name, and her ships crammed full of grain and gold. Robb left most of the trade negotiations to Tyrion and to Sansa’s twice-weekly raven letters, but he still carried his own fair share of the peace talks. The third time he and Daenerys went flying together, she said suddenly, “Wait,” and had him lie down on his back and straddled him instead. Robb made a helpless noise as she slid down upon him, sweet and wet, with the glowing heat of the dragon beneath him, but even though he couldn’t do her nearly as much good from below, she liked it anyway; her eyes were blazing with lust and conquest, and then she took her belt off and wrapped it around his hands, so he couldn’t even touch her, and said in smoky satisfaction, “I’ll decide how long it lasts.”

“Oh, fuck,” he said, strangled, and yielded to her after all; she rode him straight into the night, hours of a half-pleasurable agony rolling away as it went on and on, and when at last she came to a shaking climax, Drogon breathed fire, a forge-hot blast moving through the great armored body, the air going scorching-hot and dry as dust as they flew on through it, and Robb groaned and came as well.

They’d got very good at fucking on dragon-back by the time the negotiations were over. Sometimes they flew far afield and stopped for the night in high meadows full of goats—less full after Drogon finished his supper—and as they snuggled together beneath his wing, warm next to his body even with the deepening chill in the air as the false spring waned, Robb told her stories about the North, and about Jon, wanting to make him real to her, wanting him to live again. It made his chest ache to think about him, a deep wound of regret that felt fresh because he hadn’t let himself feel it ever before. He’d told Daenerys that he’d given up hope, but he’d been lying, until after he’d said the words aloud. He’d given up hope of his father’s ever coming home, but no one had ever told him I saw your brother die, and so he hadn’t ever truly stopped hoping for his return.

Jon had been beside him all their lives, his brother and his shadow; almost him, but for the chance of birth. But now the day wasn’t far off when Robb would have lived without Jon for longer than they’d been together. Bran was already vanished over that line: ten years of watching his little brother grow had been eaten up by three years of war in the south, and seven more of rule in the North. Robb tried to see Bran in his mind’s eye now and could barely get a glimpse of him in that last moment of farewell, the night he’d left for the south: sitting up in his bed, his face small and pale and worried with the dark closing in around him, closing in on that last memory. Robb didn’t want to lose Jon the same way.

Daenerys told him a little of her own life in return, scattered stories, enough to know it had been a hard and cruel one for a little girl. “There was a house with a red door,” she said softly, her cheek pillowed on her hands, her eyes far away. “Somewhere in Braavos. There was a lemon tree outside my window. That’s all I remember. We lived there when I was little, with the last of the Kingsguard who’d stayed loyal, until he died, and the servants chased us away and stole the property. Ser Willem Darry,” she added, and the next evening they didn’t make love; instead Robb pointed Drogon the way to the small but pretty castle on the bluffs overlooking the mouth of the Trident, and when Robb got down and called up to the highly alarmed guards on the walls, the young Lord Lyman Darry came out wide-eyed to welcome them.

They ate in his hall that night, and Daenerys looked around with shining eyes at the great tapestries on the walls, scenes of the Targaryen kings: House Darry had been one of the foremost houses of the Crownlands for many years. “If there are any younger sons of your house who want a place and high rank of their own, they shall have one with me, so long as I live,” she told Lyman, when she left, and his bastard cousin had a boy of sixteen—named Willem, for his great-uncle—who eagerly took that offer, and rode with three men at arms south to Duskendale, where the Lannisters were already loading up her ships.

He wasn’t the only man of Westeros she took away with her. “One more thing,” she said, when Tyrion held out his hand to her over the final accords, after weeks of wrangling. “You will be coming back to Meereen with me.”

“I’m not really a very valuable hostage, to be honest,” he said warily.

“I don’t need a hostage,” she said. “I need an advisor.” Tyrion stared up at her. “You’re one of those men who does know all thirty taxation schemes and the highway maintenance schedule.”

“I don’t know it about Meereen.”

“You’ll learn,” Daenerys said, steely. “You were right. All my advisors are men of war. And all the educated men of Meereen and Yunkai and Astapor are slavemasters who want my rule to fail. I need a highly competent administrator. And as long as I’m not killing your father, Joffrey will continue to have one. So he’ll have to spare you to me.”

“Well,” Tyrion said after a moment, with a frowning expression, as if he was flattered and didn’t wish to show it, “I suppose I could tell you that my loving family can’t bear to part with me, but I’d be lying.” He paused and said slowly, “I don’t suppose you’d mind if I brought along…a friend or two?”

“Bring as many as you like,” Daenerys said.

Jaime sullenly watched him going aboard the flagship, on the day of departure. He’d been bitterly disappointed by the lack of a war to fight—he’d been more confident of victory than even Robb had been—and would have liked to upbraid him and his own brother for having found a way to avert it. “I’ve been fucking Oberyn Martell for months,” he snarled, when Robb needled him.

“As if you didn’t love every moment,” Robb said, with a snort. “What you’re really upset about is he’s gone back to Dorne. Are you feeling abandoned?”

“Oh, he had to go back, because my father would have had him murdered the instant her ship was over the horizon,” Jaime said through his teeth, trying to make it sound like a threat instead of the grumbling complaint it really was. 

“I’m sorry,” Robb said, with sympathy. “Shall I fuck you instead? Come by my chambers tonight if you like,” he added, delighting in Jaime’s widening eyes as he realized he’d have to go looking for it if he wanted it, as oh, he did.

None of the rest of Tyrion’s kin had bothered to come and see him off to the other side of the world, although he was taking those friends he’d mentioned: a young squire, a sellsword, and a woman they’d hurried aboard in a heavy cloak. His shoulders had come down in relief as soon as he’d seen her reach the deck; he’d only then turned to make his farewells.

“Good luck,” Robb said, shaking his hand. “I’ll write to Triarch Malaquo to make you known to him; the message will be with him before you reach Volantis. Talisa and I will urge him to make peace, and let him know we can’t allow our own trade with Volantis to continue so long as they’re at war with Meereen, by the terms of the new agreement. I hope he’ll become more amenable to finding some common ground with you.”

“The common ground of not being burned to a crisp, perhaps,” Tyrion said. “It’s a popular ground.”

Daenerys came down from seeing the ship made ready to say her own farewells to him. “Perhaps you’ll come to visit my kingdom some day,” she said, smiling up at him.

He lifted her hands and kissed them, smiling back at her. “I’d be very glad to see you again. And you as well,” he added to Drogon, grinning at the dragon, who cocked his head to peer at him with the slitted eye that widened and shrank to take him in, and let out a small grumbling growl that meant it was all right for Robb to scratch him along the edge of his nose ridge: they’d got to know each other fairly well by now.

Neither he nor Daenerys realized the one last prize she’d taken away from Westeros until some time later; Robb had reached the crossroads inn again, on his march home, when the raven message from Tyrion found him: Stark, you son of a whore, was all it said, and Robb was only baffled at first, then eyed it half doubting. But by the time he reached Moat Cailin, the one from Daenerys herself reached him.

I’m not sure if I should say thank you, she’d written. I’ve been firmly lectured by my handmaidens that I’m doing you a very great honor and you should be the one thanking me. But I do thank you anyway. You will have to come and visit someday, now. He laughed aloud, and wrote back to tell her that he did thank her for the honor, and would pray to the gods for her health and an easy birth.

But before he set out on the march north, he had a very satisfying final night at Duskendale, with Jaime on his back beneath him, his hands bound at the wrists to the head of the bed, moaning helplessly as Robb rode him. It was good, controlling the whole thing, and when he felt satisfied, he slid off, letting Jaime put up an urgent protest.

“Was there something more you wanted?” Robb said, stretching out beside him and stroking over Jaime’s cock with his fingers.

“Stark,” Jaime groaned, and pushed his hips up desperately as Robb let his hand wander further down between his legs.

“Go on, then,” Robb said encouragingly. “Tell me what you’d like.”

“You know what I want,” Jaime snarled.

Robb leaned in and nipped at his ear, setting his teeth in it and sucking on the lobe, and softly murmured, “And you know what I want.” He put his hand to the hole and rubbed it with a finger, teasing.

Jaime writhed under the pressure. “I want you to—” He all but gnashed his teeth. “I want you to fuck me,” he said half-bitterly.

“Is that the way to ask?” Robb said chidingly, even as he settled himself between Jaime’s legs and drew them up over his shoulders. He stroked his hands all over Jaime’s beautiful muscled thighs, sheened with sweat, letting Jaime feel his cock hard and ready against him.

Jaime panted wildly, his face almost crumpled with lust, uselessly trying to squirm his way onto it, and then he finally gave in and said, “Please,” and oh, it was good, his whole hard, beautiful body going soft and yielding as Robb fucked the pride out of him at a slow, leisurely pace, making him ask for every stroke. The only thing that would have made it better would have been keeping him, and Robb told him so, and added, “Perhaps when I’m done, I’ll have my men come and make you my prisoner again, and take you away with me,” and Jaime jerked and stared at him with beautifully fresh astonishment, surprised all over again to see how helpless he could be made.

Robb grinned down at him. “What could your father do to answer it? He knows he can’t beat me in the field, and if he did murder me, the North would go over to Daenerys, and she’d come back in an instant,” he said, watching Jaime’s eyes glazing over as he made it worse, which was to say better. “I’d treat you more gently this time, of course,” he added. “I’d keep you in fine chambers, with servants to attend you, who’d know of it when I came to enjoy your favors, and when you dined with me in the hall, you’d know that everyone there knew.”

Jaime didn’t answer or make any sound at all; he was just lying very still, panting through his nostrils and shivering, gone somewhere inside himself, and when Robb said gently, “And yet you would let me have you, when I came, wouldn’t you? Tell me,” Jaime didn’t even make the slightest pretense; he whispered, “Yes,” and Robb nosed at him a little and breathed in his ear, “More.”

“Yes,” Jaime said again, louder. “Yes. Please. Please,” and he was moving wildly beneath him, utterly yielding, and Robb put his hand on his cock to feel it jerking and spurting even while he came himself.

But afterwards, while he was lying on his back and catching his breath, glowing with satisfied lust, Robb gradually noticed that Jaime had curled away from him on his side, shivering and silent: a snail taken out of his golden shell—and that was what he’d wanted, to be stripped bare, but now that he’d got it, he’d been left cold and naked.

Robb sighed out, and then he said, “Come here,” and Jaime flinched at the touch of his hand and stared at him warily, but he let himself be drawn over into Robb’s arms, still trembling. Robb stroked his head and back steadily, over and over, until Jaime at last went utterly limp and relaxed all at once into sleep.

In the morning, though, he was up and back into his clothes before Robb had even managed to finish yawning; Robb sat up and rubbed his face and stared at Jaime’s back and then said, helplessly, “Do you want to come back to Winterfell with me?”

Jaime jerked a little and said, “What?”

“We could make up some excuse,” Robb said. “I could demand that you provide safe escort for me and my army back to the North. And then—we’d come up with some reason for you to stay. Marry you to someone of the North, the daughter of one of our bannermen—”

Jaime had turned and was staring at him. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” he said with a sneer, as if Robb had lost his mind, and it wasn’t him so desperate to escape the golden cage he lived in, stinking with the thick layer of shameful muck all over the floor, that nobody could clean. “Do you think I actually want to go North and what, join your harem? My family’s ruling all of Westeros, except your frozen wasteland part of it.”

“And what you want is to get away from them,” Robb said, in exasperation. “Why wouldn’t you? Surely all they’ve ever wanted of you is to join them in one dishonor or another. Likely you made your father most proud by stabbing King Aerys in the back, and saving him the trouble of having him murdered.” Jaime flinched as hard as if he’d been struck. “I’d sooner go live beyond the Wall, myself.”

“Fuck off, Stark,” Jaime said stiffly, and snatched up his white cloak and swept it over his shoulders like armor. “I’m not going North with you, thank you very much for the charming offer, if that’s what you want to call it.”

Robb rolled his eyes and got out of the bed. “Do as you like. At least I can remind myself that you deserve to be miserable.”

Jaime glared at him with the sullen look of a man who wanted nothing more than to be carried away against his half-hearted protests, but that was too bad for him: Robb wasn’t starting a war to give him what he was too much of a coward to reach out for himself. Robb was certain anyway that it would be a disaster, for Jaime did mean that one of his objections: he wouldn’t like to be one of many. He’d either grow jealous and bitter or let himself be lured into some vicious plot that his father would press upon him, and either way, Robb was certain he was better off leaving Jaime well behind, no matter how magnificent his cock might be.

Chapter Text

Despite what he’d told Jaime, Robb didn’t at all put it past Tywin to attack his army on the march home: the aim wouldn’t be to kill him but to capture him, and drag him back to the Red Keep to be safely muzzled and kenneled and used as a hostage against the North, the way his father ought to have been, if Joffrey hadn’t been as stupid as he was vicious. It wasn’t any surprise when the scouts Robb had sent out quietly over the last few weeks brought him word that there was smoke coming from Harrenhal again.

Robb took his forces from Duskendale straight towards the kingsroad, as planned, his men marching four abreast; but two nights before they reached the Lakewood, he sent the men of the inner columns away with Dermont to arrange a counter-ambush, and gave brooms to the men on the outside, to stir up dust in between them and conceal the absence.

When Clegane and his men erupted from the trees, Robb instantly ordered a full retreat; he and his men all ran flat-out for the water. Clegane was too stupid to see anything in it but a rout: he expected men to flee from him and liked it when they did. He came on after them without the least hesitation, and when Dermont and his force came out of the trees and began hailing his exposed rear with arrows, Clegane lost all his momentum checking his force and turning them round again to face the threat at his back.

Only he couldn’t afford to do that, because Robb’s men hadn’t actually been a terrified fleeing rabble: as soon as they reached the lake, they each snatched up one of the sharpened javelins that Robb had ordered heaped up along the shore four nights before, and then they armed the shields they’d had slung on their backs and turned right around to make a line of battle. Meanwhile Clegane was already busy trying to form up his men to charge back at Dermont’s force, leaving his rear wide open all over again, even though this time he knew they were behind him.

Robb snorted when he saw it and split his men into two wings, sending half to the left under Glover’s command, and took the right himself; they swung out to either side and hit both Clegane’s flanks at once. Dermont saw what they were doing and at once charged from the front as well. In fifteen minutes they’d encircled and driven the entire Lannister force into the water, men falling down and drowning in their mail as the ranks before them were pushed back onto them.

Clegane lost what sense he had in a fury of wild temper: he’d surely been ordered not to kill Robb, but with the battle lost and his men dying all around him, he bellowed in rage and charged at Robb anyway, trying to smash through the guard to get to him. But as strong and savage as he was, he wasn’t as good as Jaime Lannister, and Robb’s guard also wasn’t a loose pack of eager young warriors anymore; they were a company, trained and sharp. Hal Mollin whistled a signal, and ten men in full plate at once closed ranks and made a bristling wall of lance-points to meet Clegane’s charge, and six men ran out on either side of it with crossbows at the ready; they shot him so full of bolts and arrows that he looked a pincushion lying on the ground, his poor horse thrashing a few steps away with another dozen arrows in its own body.

Robb rode over to look down at him, but even then, Hal and Onry kept their spears crossed between them, and it was just as well: the man still wasn’t dead. Clegane opened his eyes and bared bloody teeth up at him in a snarling mask and heaved himself back up onto his feet to come at them again, his enormous sword swinging as Hal gave a shout of alarm and the whole guard began to converge—but then Clegane’s head jerked back and he went down for good with a narrow-hilted knife jutting out of his eye as though it had appeared from thin air; Robb turned and saw Arya on a slim dark mare scarcely two paces behind him, well inside the ring of his guard, though there weren’t any gaps in the line. Hal swore and tried to spur his horse towards her; Robb had to reach out and catch his reins, and wave his other men back.

“Gloating’s stupid,” Arya said to him coldly. “You shouldn’t be stupid.”

Hal stiffened in outrage, but Robb only grinned at her widely, doing some more of it. She scowled back at him as she realized it, and then gave a yelp as her mare spooked and tried to bolt out from under her: Grey Wind was whuffing up at her from the ground, trying to rear up and put his paws on her saddle. “Stop it! Down!” she told him, but he just nipped at the mare’s hindquarters to make her rear, and Arya had to jump clear. She came down in a smooth tumble that ended with her right back on her feet, but that still put her in range; at once he was at her, licking her face as she made muffled protests and tried to squirm away, while Robb laughed, and his men looked on and traded glances of confusion.

Robb sent Clegane’s head back to King’s Landing, wrapped as a Winterfair gift for Joffrey, along with a letter: Your Grace, I have received with pleasure your warm and generous sentiments of gratitude for my aid in the south, and would be glad to return them in full measure. If you would care to grant me the opportunity, you have only ever again to cross the Blackwater, in whatever company you choose, and I will hasten at once from the North to meet you with all the affection that your kindness has earned from me. Until then, I will inform my uncle that in thanks, all the Riverlands have been made free of the tax and levies of the crown, for so long as I reign: a kingly gift indeed. After a moment’s thought, he also added a postscript—Saving only the Crossings: I know Lord Walder’s devotion to Your Grace would bar him from accepting such a relief.

“What do you think? Perhaps it’s all right to do a little gloating?” he said, showing it to Arya over the dinner table; they’d stopped in Harrenhal for the night themselves, and found a snug welcome waiting: Clegane’s men had left plentiful stores behind, expecting to return after their victory.

She tried to keep her mouth from twitching as she read it, and couldn’t, but defiantly said, “It’d still be better if he were dead, too,” as she handed it back. 

“Joffrey’s nothing,” Robb said. “Less than nothing; he only makes it harder for Tywin, not easier. Better for the boy to grow up before the crown comes to him.”

Arya narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, at once picking up the scent he’d dragged across her trail. “What do you care about Joffrey’s son?”

Robb smirked at her. “Who says he has one?”

He watched understanding and outrage come dawning into her face together; she sat back and glared at him with violence. “Who else knows?” she demanded.

“Only Margaery and Talisa,” Robb said. “I’ve not even told Sansa.”

“What? So why are you telling me!” Arya said furiously.

“So you don’t stick a knife into him while you’re so busy murdering people in the Red Keep left and right,” Robb said. 

“You don’t want me to go to the Red Keep at all!”

Robb put on a thoughtful air. “No, I don’t, do I,” he said, and grinned at her some more as she realized that she’d been baited into the open and outflanked, too.

“You’re as bad as ever!” she said; he could nearly see smoke coming out of her ears. “Always trying to be the boss of everyone!”

They could have been back home again, ten years before, with her wriggling in his arms trying her best to kick him; his eyes were stinging with happiness. “I am the boss of everyone. I’m the king! And it’s good to be the king,” he added, putting on a smirk anyway, for the pleasure of poking her a bit more; he had the sense to duck right after, too, but not quick enough to avoid getting hit on the nose by a hard roll, which she’d aimed so it found him even as he moved. “Ow!”

“You’re lucky it’s just bread!” Arya snapped.

“It might have been kinder if you’d used a rock,” he said, wincing. It hadn’t been that warm a welcome: the bread was two days stale. But it was worth his sore nose; when he sat back up and smiled at her, raising his brows, an invitation to feel the silliness with him, the growling went out of her face, and her mouth twitched again, accepting despite herself.

She got up from the table and went to the window. Robb went and stood beside her, the two of them looking out over the Riverlands to the North, the horizon a distant misty line: still a long way to get home.

“Tywin used to stand right here, just like this,” Arya said. “I thought about killing him. I could’ve got a knife. I just didn’t know how to do it. I thought I’d have to hit him in the neck, and I wasn’t tall enough. He could have stopped me. But I wanted to.” She looked down; Robb hadn’t even seen her draw the blade, but there was a knife lying across her hand, much like the one she’d used to kill Clegane, long and narrow and deadly. “I wanted to pay them back for Father.”

It was a strange relief to hear her say it. Robb had lived with her imagined reproaches in his head for so long, unanswered and unanswerable. But Talisa had been right, after all. Arya wasn’t speaking from the coldness of pure honor, a stern judgement made. It was love that had driven her, love and agony, and there was an answer to make to it after all.

“It wouldn’t have paid them back,” Robb said. Arya was listening, even without having turned her head; he could feel it. “How could Tywin Lannister ever pay them back for Father? His own children and grandchildren hate and fear him. They’ll feel no sorrow when he dies. They’ll only be afraid again, of the rest of the world. Because he’s not made them ready to face it on their own. What is there in him that could ever measure up to what they took from us?”

“He’s not worth Father’s little finger,” Arya said. “But we can’t get Father back. So I want them to be afraid. I want them to lie awake at night and be afraid of someone coming to kill them and everyone they love.”

“They do,” Robb said. “They will. They were wary of us already, but from now on, because of the help I gave them against Daenerys, they’ll lie awake every night and fear us coming out of the North with an army to kill them all. Because now they know that we can, and that’s what they’d do, in our place. It wouldn’t matter to them that they’d signed a treaty, or given their word; it wouldn’t matter to them that they don’t know our realm or want to rule it. They’d want to kill us for no reason but that they could. So of course they’ll live in that fear themselves, every day. And it’ll only be worse for them that they’ll never understand why we don’t.”

#

Some part of what he said or did worked, well enough for the moment. Arya rode out with him the next morning openly, in a grey Northern cloak lined with fur; he’d had his spare trimmed short, and when he’d given it to her, she’d held it in her hands silently, looking at the direwolf-head clasps, and then she’d put it on.

There was no real road running from Harrenhal anymore; it had been abandoned too long. Grey Wind went running ahead of them through the hills and scrubby woods, nosing out a trail for them to follow back to the kingsroad and the North. Robb went with him halfway, in the back of his mind; as he led them on his trail, he told Arya about running with the wolves, how Rickon had taught him and Sansa to do it.

Arya listened, her eyes faraway. “I dreamed with Nymeria,” she said. “Of running in the woods, hunting. Even when…even when I couldn’t dream of anything else at all. Even when everything else was gone.” She fell silent, and he studied her frowning; he still felt wary of her, a feral creature that might yet bolt at any moment.

“Will you tell me some of what happened to you, there in Braavos?” he said, as cautiously as he could, making it a question, not a plea.

They rode on for half a mile before she said, out of the cold grey air, “After you made peace, I thought that no one could avenge Father anymore. No one could avenge any of them. Bran and Micah, Jory, Master Forel, Yoren, Gendry…” He didn’t know all the names, but he felt the grief for them anyway, understanding the path she’d walked there, paved with torment and death. “And that’s what they make you, in the House of Black and White. No one.”

For a moment, there was an emptiness in her face that made Robb’s belly tighten. I asked who she was, and she said she was no one, Brienne had said. He felt suddenly that he was catching sight of it, a little, what it was that could let someone change their face: not a mask or a disguise, but—sloughing themselves off, so they might become another person whole.

And that was what those Faceless Men and their god had wanted Arya to do: to shed all that thick weight of grief and sorrow and walk away from herself forever, leaving Arya Stark behind like an empty skin on the ground. To become a nameless, hollow creature, one who would have murdered wherever they sent her, without caring who or why or what might come of it, a vessel for the god of death. Robb didn’t need her to say that she had been very close to doing it, that she might yet do it, only the thinnest tether holding her to herself, to their family.

He tried to think what he could do to make it stronger, as they rode on in silence. When they came up over the next ridge, in the far distance he saw the columns of friendly smoke rising from the great market town that stood in the triangle of land that was made by the riverroad and the kingsroad crossing the Trident and each other. He said slowly, “You set Nymeria loose near here, didn’t you?”

Arya turned and frowned at him. “We were all camped at the crossroads inn.”

That was still several days’ ride away, but as they traveled on towards it, Robb sent his scouts ranging out ahead and on all sides to find villages and small crofters, and ask them for news of any large wolves in the woods. Fifty different stories came back, of course, of monsters out of fairy tales, but a day before they reached the Trident, one of the scouts brought back a woodcutter who laconically spoke of seeing a great, pale-grey wolf with white markings on the eyes, high as a man at the shoulder, who made a low coughing bark. “Seen her close once,” the man said. “Come through a clearing carrying a whole deer in her mouth, like a fox with a chicken. Looks at me with my axe. I say to her, you don’t fuss me any, I won’t fuss you any. She understood all right.”

Robb sent most of the men on to the crossroads inn to camp, and had his scouts leave a deer in the clearing the man showed them, with the liver already out and cleaned and waiting: Arya remembered that had been Nymeria’s favorite treat. The guard reluctantly stayed back, and he and Arya sat together quietly with Grey Wind just inside the edge of the clearing. The false spring had fully come to an end, the days grown shorter once more. The ground was frozen solid, with a crisp coating of icy snow: the hunting would be getting thin again.

Twilight was falling when Grey Wind’s ears pricked forward. He gave a low whuffing sound, and then a whine, quivering a little under Robb’s restraining hand. It was another half hour, dark coming quickly, before the snow crunched a little underfoot, and the big shadow came out of the trees to go pale in the moonlight, pacing slowly one foot after another towards the deer. Nymeria had seen them already from the shadows; her eyes were fixed upon them as she came, wary. Grey Wind’s tail thumped the ground; Robb stroked his head, quieting him. Nymeria paused, looking at them. None of them moved. After a moment she came the rest of the way to the deer, and took the liver, snapping it up in two bites, and licked her chops. She looked down at the deer and back at them, considering, and then she bent her head and tore away a long strip of meat to eat. Grey Wind lurched under Robb’s hand and whuffed again. She looked at him sidelong and bared her teeth a little, but he answered with a sharp bark, and then there was no holding him: he bounded across the clearing and joined in. They made quick work of the deer, and started wrestling over the last leg until it came apart between them and they were tussling, wrangling and chasing each other with the funny small yips they made when at play, until they went tumbling together all around the clearing in a ball and finally fell out of it facing one another in a crouch, panting and tails wagging furiously.

Robb stood slowly, and Arya got up with him. Nymeria swung her head round to look at both of them at once, but less warily. “Nymeria,” Arya said softly, and her ears pricked. Arya took another liver out of the covered bucket they’d kept aside. “Nymeria, come.” Nymeria cocked her head, and then Grey Wind whuffed enviously—he liked liver quite well himself—and that decided her; she came, one step at a time, and Arya gave her the liver the way Father had taught them all to do it: holding it up by the end to dangle just in front of the snout, so the wolves could reach out and take it without biting off a finger by accident.

Nymeria was wary of any other men at first, and preferred to run well ahead with Grey Wind, but each night when Arya rode out past the edge of camp, she came to her for more treats of liver, and when the first snowstorm caught them on the road, she came padding through the quiet camp at Grey Wind’s heels, and after a few plaintive whines outside the flap, she at last followed him into the snug royal tent; ten minutes later, she’d stolen most of Arya’s cot with the warming bricks at the foot and was asleep.

They’d reached the Neck by then. Robb still hadn’t sent word to Winterfell, for he couldn’t bear to raise Mother’s hopes, but a rumor had gone ahead of them anyway, because six days later, when Moat Cailin came into view, there was a direwolf flag flying from the ramparts, a Stark is here, and a pair of figures standing at the top of the highest tower watching for them, the smaller one cloaked in blue. Even as he and Arya looked up and saw them, they vanished away again.

Arya halted in her tracks, staring up at the empty parapets, as if she wanted to run after all. Robb would have leaped on her if he’d thought it would do any good, but instead he said, “You don’t mean to be a coward, do you?” and got a glare in return.

Arya would have had to flee at once, if she’d meant to try it. Mother was out of the keep and riding to meet them not ten minutes later, Brienne on her heels, and as she reached them her whole face was crumpling up around her mouth and eyes; she was sobbing and smiling at once as she caught Arya’s face in her hands, unable to speak, only smoothing her palms over her cheeks and her hair, looking searchingly into her eyes.

But Arya had gone wholly blank, into the stillness of a cornered, wounded animal; her mouth was a thin slash of a line, and Mother’s joy was quieting in answer. She drew a deep breath to master herself, and then smiled at her, her mouth trembling only a little, and waited. Arya shuddered a little, a shiver through her shoulders, and then she lurched forward. Mother didn’t weep again as she took her into her arms, only shut her eyes and held her close, a cradling hand upon her as Arya put her head down against her shoulder and huddled in, Mother’s cloak draping around her like wings.

Chapter Text

Brienne felt that her heart was swelling painfully against her breastbone as she rode in through the gates of Winterfell just behind the royal party. Princess Sansa was waiting for them in the great courtyard: as still as a statue, tall and stern and beautiful, with only her hair vivid against the snow and the grey of her gown and her cloak. Her gloved hands were clasped tight against each other, and as they came through the gates and she saw their faces, she shut her eyes and let out a slow shuddering breath of relief, as if she’d been clenched tight the whole time alone, waiting for her family to come back again.

When Arya swung down and came to face her, they both stared at one another blankly for a long moment, as one might meeting a stranger, searching the face for some sign. “You got taller,” Arya said finally.

Sansa smiled a very little, briefly. “You didn’t,” she said. Then she moved and they were clinging to one another, and Lady Catelyn went and put her arms around them both to hold their heads against her as the girls turned to bring her into their embrace, closing her eyes as tears came down her face. “Gods be praised, I have you both safe at home again at last,” she said, her voice breaking.

King Robb had gone to Queen Talisa, who been waiting outside with Sansa to greet them; she was with child again, but had only just begun to show, and she was well-wrapped in a warm mantle of wool and fur. He had his arm around her shoulders and was looking upon his mother and his sisters with his eyes wet in happiness. He even looked over at her, too, and smiled as if to welcome her into the rejoicing; Brienne blinked away her own few tears and smiled back at him in answer.

“Everyone wants to see you, but we thought we shouldn’t all descend on you at once,” Queen Talisa said to Arya, smiling warmly at her in welcome after they’d been presented to one another. She looked at Lady Catelyn. “Walda’s laid on dinner in the Great Hall for our bannermen and the guard; we’ll host them without you, if you all want to go up to the sitting room instead. And I know you’ll want to meet Talisin,” she added to the king. “Goneril’s with him in the nursery.”

He kissed her and went at once to see his newest son, and the other children. Brienne meant to follow Queen Talisa to the Great Hall, but before she could, Lady Catelyn turned and caught her hand, with a speaking look, and drew her with them instead. Sansa led them all up to the sitting room inside the north tower; there was a hearty stew of venison and pumpkin hanging over the fire, with fresh bread and butter and a treat of green peapods from the glassgardens laid on the table. Old Nan was rocking by the fire, pretending to knit, and Maester Luwin asleep in his chair. He spoke very little anymore, except with his eyes, but when Sansa roused him gently, he reached his frail hands out trembling towards Arya, and when she carefully took them, he said very faintly, “Welcome home, my lady,” smiling up at her.

He had a letter from Prince Rickon waiting in his lap for Arya to read, a very short one, only to send her his love, and to say that he was coming for a visit with his wife Lyanna, to see her and be with them all again. “He’s married?” Arya said, incredulous, looking up from it.

“Over the corpse of an elk, the day they met,” Sansa said, dryly. “I think poor Robb let it stand because he didn’t have any idea what else to do.”

But after the first greetings, Arya seemed restless and uneasy. Brienne had gone out on the terrace for some air, warm in her armor; after only a little while, Arya came out herself as well, but she went to the far edge, gazing out away from the keep over the pristine snowfields towards the dark pines of the Wolfswood. Brienne hesitated and glanced back into the room: Catelyn had held back herself to remain by the fire, watching Arya with sorrow and worry still in her face.

It was Sansa who came out to join her sister, going to stand beside her, a hand resting on the parapet. Her hair was tightly braided into a circlet, as she often wore it now, and she looked out over the North as if surveying her domain. Below in the courtyard, she’d seemed more like the girl she’d once been, made young with worry; but with the tension gone, she was once again the woman Brienne now served, cloaked in authority.

Arya had noticed the change also; she was looking up at her sister with a slight frown, as if once again they were strangers to one another. “So you’re the Hand of the King,” she said after a moment. “Like Father was.”

“I suppose so,” Sansa said. “It’s funny, I never really think of him as the Hand.” She turned the other way to look down into the keep. “I remember him here, at Winterfell. He didn’t belong in the south at all.”

They were silent. “He wasn’t very good at it, was he,” Arya said suddenly, and Sansa made a small snorting laugh.

“He was absolutely dreadful at it,” she said, and they looked at each other and were laughing together, a little, a laughter that was so plainly mixed with grief that Brienne looked away, her eyes stinging, thinking of her own father.

Arya seemed a little eased by the moment, but she still looked away, back into the forest. “I was surprised when Robb told me. I almost couldn’t believe you weren’t married to some lord by now.”

“I’m still looking for the right man,” Sansa said, and added dryly, “There’s no rush. Robb’s having enough children for all of us put together.”

“He promised he wouldn’t try to make a match for me, or anything like that,” Arya said. “I guess now I believe him.” She was quiet, and then she added, abruptly, “But I don’t know what else there is for Arya Stark to do.”

Sansa nodded. “You can’t step back into the place you left, even less than I could,” she said in agreement. “You were gone for longer, and farther away. And you didn’t fit into it very well to begin with.”

She was looking out at the trees herself. Arya glanced up at her again, with that frowning surprise coming back into her face, as if she hadn’t expected to find that understanding. “No, I didn’t,” she said, and she made it sound light, but it plainly wasn’t a light matter at all.

“And Robb can’t really make another place for you,” Sansa said. “Even though he understands what you can do now. He won’t ever be able to do anything but try to protect you, us, as much as he can. Because he’ll never stop trying to stand in Father’s place for us. So he can’t give you real work to do. But that’s all right.” She turned from the view to face Arya head on, a note of cold steel coming into her voice. “I can.”

Arya had gone still and straight, looking up at Sansa like a hound—like a wolf—gone suddenly on the alert, ears pricked and sharp. And then she gave a single nod of her head, accepting the offer. Watching them, Brienne couldn’t have said what in Arya’s posture changed; nothing she could point to, and yet she still had the clear impression of the same kind of easing she’d seen in Sansa below. After a moment, Arya even tilted her head back, a new brightness coming into her. “So what does that make me?” she said archly. “The Hand of the Hand of the King?”

Sansa smiled at her, thin and cold. “The Knife,” she said, and Arya was smiling back as she nodded. She even let Sansa take her arm as they went back inside to their mother by the fire.

The king rejoined them all after only a little while more, with a few additions to the company: Prince Brandon and Lord Bert had successfully argued that right of birth ought to win them the privilege of coming to meet their aunt ahead of the other children, making promises of good behavior, and Elia had managed to escape the nursery behind them and crept in on their heels.

“But I didn’t promise to behave, Father,” she said, when Robb spoke to her sternly, and Arya laughed and said, “She can stay.”

“Oh, you’re going to be encouraging her, I can already see,” Robb said, with a mock scowling, but gave way.

After they ate together, the children demanded Arya and Robb’s attention for themselves. Brienne stood again a little back from the inner circle by the fire, watching with her heart still glad and full, and Catelyn came to take her hand and press it between her own with gratitude. “This is a joy we owe to you,” she said, low. “I bless the Mother that she sent you to me and my girls.”

“I did very little, my lady,” Brienne said. “It was the king who brought Princess Arya home.”

“Thanks to you, Robb was warned of what she’d endured,” Catelyn said. “And it was thanks to you that Sansa was returned to us, and the peace made. The Lannisters would never have done it if you had not brought the Kingslayer back to them alive and well.”

“I’m glad to have done it,” Brienne said, and then swallowed as she heard her own words. Her cheeks felt warm, and she hoped anyone looking at her would only think it a flush from the good wine on the table, and the fire’s heat. It had been her duty to bring Jaime Lannister back to the Red Keep, but she was glad to have done it; far more glad than she ought to have been, she knew, and more than anything about him deserved.

He’d even wanted her to murder the poor woodcutter who had really saved them, just because the man had recognized him. When he’d said so, at first Brienne had wanted to think him mistaken, but the man had darted one more look at the Kingslayer’s face as he went back to his donkey, and she’d known Lannister was right. “Well?” he’d said, almost tauntingly.

“No,” she’d said, in fierce rejection, and then she’d called to the man, “Wait, goodman. I think you know who this man is.”

The woodcutter had begun to make protests, on the verge of flight, and she’d held up her hand. “The Starks will pay you in silver, if you give him back to them, but Tywin Lannister will pay you in gold. Will you help us?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lannister had hissed to her, even after the man had agreed to hide them in his cart, beneath his load of firewood, and drive them right past the hunters that he’d seen beating the countryside, searching for them. “He’s going to betray us the first time we meet someone with a sword. Kill him, hide me under the wood yourself, and you can drive us straight to King’s Landing.”

“You’d gladly murder an innocent man, one who’s even offered to help us, just to protect yourself a little more. The way you tried to murder Bran Stark, and killed your own kinsman. You’re a coward, aren’t you?” Brienne had said to him coldly.

And she was right. Ser Jaime had stared at her with his face pale and furious. He’d scarcely spoken to her the whole time while they’d huddled underneath the woodpile. And three days later, after the woodcutter let them out safely on the banks of the Blackwater, just outside the town of Stoney Sept, Lannister had tried to murder her, too: he’d got his hands on her second sword while she’d been trying to get him into a boat, and she’d had to fight him on the riverbank for the privilege of saving his life and taking him home to be set free.

And she would never have willfully taken up the foolish challenges he’d kept throwing at her, but she’d enjoyed beating him, standing over him as he gasped, disarmed, at her feet; it had felt like taking a deep clean breath after weeks of stench. She’d taken her second sword back and grabbed him by the belt and the collar and heaved him scrambling into the boat, and then she’d gone to sit in the rear and pushed off and said, “If you try to come at me again, I’ll pin you to the bench with a sword through the meat of your thigh, and you can hope we don’t hit any fast water.”

But he hadn’t tried. He’d spent an hour lying in the bottom of the boat staring at her almost incredulously, as if he didn’t quite believe that he’d lost, and she was still there and alive. And when he’d been forced to swallow it at last, he’d started talking, and not the sort of taunting nonsense he’d kept at her with before; instead he’d started trying to threaten her, with vengeance from his father, with vengeance from Robb Stark; when that hadn’t worked, he’d tried to bribe her with everything from money to marriage; even a knighthood.

“You can’t be serious,” she’d said finally at that, exasperated: like having to fend off someone who kept trying to stab you with a loaf of bread. “Do you really imagine I’d consider it an honor, to be knighted by your blade? I’d sooner be knighted by a drunk procurer I paid fivepence to do it. What are you doing?”

“What?” he said.

“What are you doing?” Brienne said. “We’re in a boat on the Blackwater, running with the current. With the grace of the gods, we’ll be in King’s Landing in three days, maybe less, and you’ll be free as soon as your brother hands over the Stark girls, as he offered to do. Why are you bothering with any of this? If you had killed me, you’d just be stuck on your own with manacles and no one to help you. There’s no sense in it. Are you so desperate to keep a pair of innocent little girls imprisoned and away from their family? Or are you just trying to persuade yourself that I’m a coward, to make yourself feel better for being one?”

She’d evidently gotten it right. He snarled at her, “Call me a coward one more time—”

“And what? You’ll make me beat you again?” she said, and he’d shut up and was only seething the rest of the way to King’s Landing—where the company of Lannister men had taken her by surprise as she’d drawn up to the docks near Fishmarket, just outside the walls.

She guessed afterwards that some spy had sighted her on the way, and they’d been lying in wait for a chance. As soon she got out to tie up the boat, a dozen men came at her before she could jump back in and put a knife to the Kingslayer’s throat. She’d killed three, but the rest had dragged her down onto her knees and taken her swords. “Cut off the ugly bitch’s head,” their commander had said, and she’d looked up at him with contempt and made herself ready to die.

“No!” the Kingslayer had said, and they’d both jerked to stare at him; the men had helped him out of the boat, and there was a man with a set of tools already working on his manacles; they’d fallen off him in another moment.

“But, Ser Jaime, I thought—” the commander said, uncertainly, looking back at her and towards him.

“Don’t think,” Lannister said to him coldly. “It seems a little beyond your powers.”  But Brienne also couldn’t see any reason he wouldn’t have her killed, when he’d done his best to do it himself before. He’d glared at her with so much savagery it made even less sense. When she kept on staring back at him, baffled, he looked away and told the men to bring her along. He had them deliver her not to a dungeon but to a guest chamber in the Red Keep, and even told the servants to bring her a bath, and clean clothing, and a meal.

She ate the food and bathed and then put on her armor again; she didn’t have much hope of escaping, and they’d taken her swords and her dagger, but she’d keep what little chance she did have. She lay down on the bed and slept as well as she could until footsteps were coming to the door; as she sat up, Lannister came in, looking a different man: he’d bathed and cut his hair short and shaved the ragged beard, and he was wearing fine silk and leather and velvet, a golden lion again. “My turn to ask, what are you doing?” he said, flicking a hand up and down at her. “Do you think you’re going to fight your way out of the Red Keep?”

“I think I’d rather be armed with enemies close to hand, if I have the choice,” she said. “Do you mean to keep your word?”

“And what word is that?” he said, coolly, raising a brow at her.

“The vow you made to Lady Catelyn,” Brienne said. “You promised that if she sent you back to the Red Keep, you’d return her daughters to her safely. Are you going to keep it?”

He made a show of consideration. “Hm. It’s an interesting point. You didn’t quite get me to the Red Keep, after all. My own men did that. And I do recall some other promises I made along the way. There was that one about having you thrown off the highest tower into the bay. What do you think? Should I keep them all?”

He’d tilted his head and smiled at her, pleased and taunting; she’d looked back at him with the same contempt she’d felt all along the way. “You’re a liar and a coward, and you’ll do as you like,” she said. “I’ve done my duty as well as I could. I’m not afraid to meet the gods. And if you want any hope of mercy when you go to them, you’ll send those girls back to their mother.”

The smirk had fallen off, and he’d stared at her wide-eyed and incredulous, as if he’d thought he’d get some other answer out of her now; he took a step towards her and spat out, “You dare,” almost strangled. “I could have you tortured to death slowly, I could—have you raped by a dozen men—”

She hadn’t had the slightest doubt that Lannister would do all of it. She’d thought that she understood: he wasn’t satisfied to be free and safe; he wasn’t even satisfied just to have her killed. He wanted to break her, in punishment for refusing to yield to him. He wanted to see her cowering and afraid, and the only thing that would stay his hand would be if she gave him what he wanted.

A cold, clear quiet had come settling into her. She still remembered the feeling vividly even now: Winterfell reminded her of it, sometimes; standing outside in the snowy woods at night, with all the stars brilliant above. She’d stared him in the face and said, very low and cold, “As I said. You’re a liar and a coward, and you’ll do as you like,” and he’d given a snarl of fury and lunged at her, and she’d been ready to fight, to try and grapple him, and instead he’d seized her head in his hands and kissed her, ferocious and desperate.

She’d jerked back a step less in alarm than in pure surprise, and she’d fallen backwards onto the bed and he’d come on her—still kissing her and grappling for the buckles on her armor, which she was glad she’d put back on; she managed to heave him off her, and get off the bed. “What are—what did—”  she’d said, staring down at him too bewildered to even truly think of a question, and he’d stared up at her as panting and wild-eyed as if he hadn’t any hope of giving her an answer, even if she had. Then he’d got off the bed and flung himself past her out into the corridor and slammed the door behind him.

After a moment she’d just sat down limply in the chair by the fire. She hadn’t liked it, of course she hadn’t liked it, only she’d still felt it, his mouth warm on hers, and his hands moving and urgent on her body, while he’d done as he liked, which didn’t after all seem to be having her tortured and raped and killed, and—that was why he’d wanted so desperately to prove to himself that she was a coward? Why he’d been trying to escape from her? Because he—because he’d started to—

Of course she hadn’t returned the sentiments; how could she? Only—only she’d felt uncomfortable and strange when she’d thought about it, because the only thing he could possibly have loved her for was—because she’d been strong, and brave, and true; the things she wanted most to be, and what no one else in the world—no man—had ever wanted her to be, except her father, and Renly.

When the Kingslayer had come back the next day, this time he’d behaved like a different man. He’d spoken to her with formal courtesy, stiffly, calling her Lady Brienne and avoiding her eyes, and then he’d paused, his jaw moving, and he’d bit out with real rage thrumming in his voice, “We—don’t have Lady Arya. She escaped the Keep, the day Eddard was arrested. No one’s seen her since.”

She’d stared, and then all at once illumination had come blazing through her, and she’d forgotten her confusion from the day before. She stood up with high indignation. “And all this time, you meant to keep your promise, didn’t you? You just wanted cringing while you were at it! If it weren’t for that poor girl, I’d say it serves you right,” she added, meaning that he’d be forsworn after all, which she understood now that he did mind, just as he minded knowing there were decent, honorable, brave people in the world—because he knew he wasn’t one of them, and he wished he was.

He lost his formality in glaring back at her and said, “What do you know? Maybe I’ll keep Sansa after all!”

“Stop behaving like a prick,” Brienne said. He twitched back and scowled, unhappy to have been seen through. “Will you let me go and look for her?”

He squinted at her, perplexed. “What do you mean, look for her? You want to go wandering around the Keep until you stumble over her?”

“Not Sansa!” Brienne said impatiently. “Will you let me go and look for Arya?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, she’s dead,” he said. “She disappeared months ago and our men have been scouring the crownlands for her. If she’s lucky, she got herself murdered in a back alleyway; if she was unlucky, worse things happened to her first.”

“I’ll believe she’s dead when I’ve seen her corpse,” Brienne said. “Will you let me go look?”

“Do you know you’re the most infuriating woman in the entire world?” he demanded.

She’d stared at him helplessly again: what was she to say to that? He stared back and then flushed in mortification as he realized how he was exposing himself, and Brienne discovered that her own cheeks were hot, too. She swallowed the embarrassment and made herself say, “And have you told Sansa yet that she’s going home?”

“What?” he said, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to mention such a thing to a helpless young girl who’d been made a hostage through no fault or even act of her own, and had been forced to watch her father murdered.

“Then I do want to see her, too!” Brienne said, glaring at him. “I doubt anyone here’s had the slightest care for her at all.”

He’d glared back and stalked out of the room without another word, but scarcely a moment later, two uncertain goldcloaks came in and told her in questioning tones that they were to take her to see Lady Sansa. Brienne wasn’t surprised herself anymore; she nodded and followed them to meet Sansa: a tall and beautiful girl with a face as blank as untouched paper and the hunted eyes of a wild animal penned up too close, by cruel keepers.

“I don’t understand,” Sansa had said, after Brienne had finished telling her. “You’re talking about the Kingslayer. I saw him in the garden yesterday, arguing with the queen. He’s not a prisoner.”

“Your mother freed him, and I brought him here as part of an agreement, to be exchanged for you and…” Brienne began, but Sansa’s expression had halted her: a look you’d give a madman, or someone speaking utter drivel.

“They have him,” she said. “Why would they send me back now? What good would it do them?”

Brienne hesitated. It was a just question. She had meant to keep a blade at Jaime Lannister’s throat every second until the girls were handed over to her, because she also hadn’t believed for an instant that he would keep his word. It was almost distressing for her to find that she’d spoken to Sansa now without hesitating. “I don’t blame you for doubt,” she said after a moment. “But I believe he does mean to keep his word.”

But Sansa had only shaken her head a little and looked away, as if there wasn’t any use speaking to such a misguided fool. And she’d been right, because the next morning the Kingslayer came back to Brienne’s room with his face sullen and resentfully told her that his father didn’t mean to send Sansa back at all. “But she won’t be a hostage anymore. He’s—making an honorable match for her,” he said, without looking at her straight on, but his eyes darted at her quickly and away again just as fast.

“A match?” Brienne said.

“She’s to be married to my brother Tyrion.”

Brienne already didn’t know what to make of him saying any of it to her, but that diverted her further. “Your brother—the one they call the Imp?” she said, incredulously.

“Tyrion’s a good man,” the Kingslayer said, defensively, raising his chin.

“I don’t believe it for an instant, and even if he were, Sansa’s near six feet tall, and a girl of fifteen!” Brienne said. “To be matched to a dwarf twice her age? How could your father think it anything but cruelty to both of them?” But when she said it, he flinched, and she understood at once all over again. “That’s what he wants. To humiliate his own son, and an innocent girl he promised to send home to her mother. More cringing. You come by it honestly, don’t you?”

He glared at her. “Tyrion’s a Lannister of Casterly Rock!”

“You say that as if it’s anything to be proud of! And I wouldn’t care if he were a crowned king blessed by all the Seven!” Brienne snapped back. “Your father has no right to give Sansa Stark in marriage. If he wants a match between her and his son, he can ask Lady Catelyn for her, and I wouldn’t advise him to hold his breath. No.”

“What do you mean, no?” he said.

“I mean no,” Brienne said, glaring at him. “No, she’s not to be married to your brother. She’s to be sent home to her mother. Those were the terms.”

“Well, my father’s altering them,” he said sourly, like a child who’d been sent to bed without supper.

“Stop telling me about what your father is going to do,” Brienne said. “It’s not his promise to keep or to break. It’s yours. What are you going to do about it?”

He stared at her as incredulously as if she’d asked him to sprout wings and fly. “What do you want me to do, snatch her out of the Red Keep and go back to Stark to hand her over, and be thrown back in a pen for my trouble?”

“No, I wouldn’t expect anything like that from you,” Brienne said, and he flinched. “Get me and her out of the Keep, and I’ll keep the rest of your promise for you. I’ll see her home, in safety, and then I’ll go look for Arya, if she’s alive to be found. You can keep that much of your word without it costing you anything at all.”

“Don’t be absurd,” he said. “You’ll never make it.”

“The way I didn’t make it here, with you?” Brienne said. “If you don’t like that, find another way.”

He looked away, his jaw shifting under the skin, and then he’d said, “Fine. I’ll marry you.”

“You’ll what?” Brienne said, staring at him.

“My father wants me to leave the Kingsguard and get married,” he said, as if that was some sort of an answer. “If I tell him I’ll do it, in exchange for his sending Sansa back—”

“Do you think this is funny?” Brienne said through her teeth.

“What are you complaining about?” he said, as if he didn’t think anything of it at all. “You’ll be the Lady of Casterly Rock, the richest woman in the kingdom—”

“Yes, what a splendid match it would be,” she said, almost breathless with outrage. “There’s only one trouble with it: I’d have to marry you.” He had the gall to give her a look of indignation. “You can’t really think I’d do it!”

“What about your promise?” he said through his teeth.

“I gave my word to Lady Catelyn that I’d bring you to King’s Landing to be exchanged for her daughters, and I’ve kept it as best I can,” she said. “I’ve risked my life to see it done. But I don’t owe it to her to give myself in marriage, and I certainly don’t owe it to you! Vow myself to you before the gods, just to save you from having to face down your own father?”

He sucked in a sharp breath, his face drawn taut, and came at her; she didn’t yield an inch, and he halted just before her, barely enough room for breath between them, his eyes bright with anger in his beautiful face, the strength and power of his body gathered like a crouching beast, ready to spring, and she couldn’t help feeling an answering heat and hunger in her own body. It didn’t make her back away; she only stared down at the challenging look in his eyes as he leaned in even closer. She did wonder what he was doing now, until she realized with fresh outrage, that was what he was doing: he was  deliberately trying to make her feel it.

She exclaimed and put her hands out and shoved him back hard; he staggered back a few paces. “And now you’re a lecher who’ll come at an unprotected woman? Why on earth would that make me want to marry you?” He straightened up with his face twisted up full of frustration as if he was trying to get up and over a brick wall, and he kept running himself into it headlong instead. “You must know it’s nonsense!” she burst out. “Your whole life you’ve gone from betrayal to deceit to murder. Name me one decent thing you’ve ever done! Give me one, even one reason why I should be willing to marry you, Kingslayer?”

He was drawn up tall and furious, and he spat at her, “That.”

“What?” she said.

“I killed the king,” he said, savagely. “Before he burned down the whole city.”

“The whole—” She stopped, falling silent, because she could see in his face that he truly meant just that: the whole city.

It was an almost impossible thing to imagine. She’d seen only a little part of King’s Landing, but that little part had still been enormous, bigger than every other town she’d ever visited put together. It had taken nearly an hour for the goldcloaks to march them from the docks to the entrance to the Red Keep, and they hadn’t even been at the most distant city gates. She’d never seen so many people in her entire life: men, women, little children playing and running, shrines to dozens of gods and the great dome of the Sept rising like a sun of blessing over it all.

And that was why he’d broken his first oath. Not because he hadn’t cared, not because he’d held his honor cheap; he’d only done it to save all those people from a king who’d meant to throw them all onto his own funeral pyre, when he’d known that the war and his throne was lost.

She didn’t doubt for a moment that it was true. Jaime had turned his whole body away from her, his mouth a hard line and his hands clenched, as if he feared her understanding more than her contempt. And of course he did; that was surely why he had never told anyone else, why no one knew the story. He’d known they would laud him for his oathbreaking, and he hadn’t been able to bear it. He’d probably told himself that he kept it secret as a matter of pride, when instead it was just that he’d known the truth: he was still an oathbreaker, and there was nothing to be done to mend that, even if every other person in the world would eagerly have pardoned him.

“All right,” she said after a moment, measured; she wouldn’t answer his honesty by pretending otherwise. “Yes. That was the only decent thing to do, even if you had to break your oath to do it.”

His back eased a little as he breathed out, as if he’d been tensed and afraid of the blow that hadn’t come; he straightened his shoulders and turned back to face her with his chin lifted and his false mask of pride back in place and said mockingly, “I’m very glad you approve, my lady. So with that settled—”

She said exasperated, “I’m still not going to marry you!” and he had the gall to look offended. “That’s one thing. It’s not enough! You’ve done nothing since we came besides giving me excuses for why you can’t keep this oath, and all of them have been stupid or cowardly or both. When Sansa and Arya Stark are safe at home with their mother again, then you can court me, if you can think of anything of more worth to offer me than your house or your cock. It wasn’t that impressive.”

She was fed up, or she wouldn’t have said it, and as soon as the words came out she felt herself go red; it wasn’t right, and he seized the opening at once. “Oh, the hell it wasn’t!” he said, and was across the room in an instant, catching her head to his and kissing her again, his hand at the back of her hips pressing her into him, and it was impressive, when she could feel it hard and eager against her belly, through the thin soft wool of their clothes: she’d made the stupid mistake of leaving off the armor that morning.

But she could still recover her position. She wrenched herself loose, panting, and hooked his legs out from under him while she shoved him back, so he went windmilling wildly backwards and slammed down into the floor. She got herself to the other side of the table and picked up the heavy bottle of wine by the neck. “Come at me again, and I’ll smash your skull in,” she said, gulping for air.

He just lay there on the floor with his eyes shut a moment, breathing hard; then he snarled wordlessly and got up and stormed out again.

But he’d come back that same night and told her that he’d steal Sansa out of the keep for her two weeks later, on the night of the wedding itself. “She’s under heavy guard right now; there’s no chance of getting her away. When they’ve gone to the bedding chamber, and everyone else is still busy drinking, I’ll follow them and get Tyrion to give her to me. He’ll keep the door shut, and the next morning he’ll say he woke up and found her gone. I’ll let you out before we go to the ceremony, with money, and you’ll buy two horses and meet me at the Gate of the Gods.”

“All right,” she said. It seemed simple enough to her, and a good plan. No one would be expecting it; even his father would be pleased and sated, surely, after such a good meal of pain and humiliation. 

Jaime had seemed to expect something more, some protest; he added savagely, “You do understand, my father’s men will catch you again before you’ve gone five miles, and they’ll kill you and bring the girl straight back. Assuming they don’t rape both of you while they’re at it. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather marry me?”

“Yes,” she said levelly. “I’m sure,” and he’d stared at her and she’d known he wanted to kiss her again, and the worst part of it was that now she’d wanted to kiss him, too. But what use was it to kiss him? She’d given him the lowest possible bar to clear, and if he couldn’t do it, there wasn’t any sense allowing herself to be wounded further. She’d put her armor on again that morning, and she put her hand on the bottle and glared at him in warning. He glared back, but he didn’t try it.

And then the next day, the news of fire and blood had come from Astapor, and he’d come and told her, sounding a little bewildered, that Sansa was being sent home to her mother after all, along with peace terms. They’d stared at one another, and then he’d said, with a burst of anger, “You know Arya’s dead.”

“No, I don’t,” Brienne said, and he’d at least understood by then that she wasn’t to be talked out of going; he didn’t argue with her further. He’d taken her to the Gate of the Gods to see Sansa riding away with her escort, on the way to Riverrun, and then he’d set her on the kingsroad herself; he’d even given her a fine warhorse and a purse of money, and a drawing of Arya that Lord Varys had given to the spies who’d been searching for her.

Jaime’s jaw had been tight with frustration as they’d said their farewells: he’d searched her face as if he still thought there was something else he could say or do that would change her mind, as if she wasn’t just doing what she had to do. Or perhaps as if he still hoped to find something that would let him pry his own heart away from her. She would have been glad for him to find it; surely it would have pried his claws out of her, too.

But she wasn’t going to change herself to give it to him. She’d only waited for him to let go of the reins of the horse, and when he kept staring at her as if he wanted nothing more than to leap on her and devour her, she sighed a little and said, “Goodbye, Ser Jaime,” formally, and then she’d taken the reins from his hand and mounted up and gone.

But she hadn’t been able to help glancing back, once. It had been a mistake. He’d still been standing there with his fists clenched, and he’d moved a little, as if her gaze had been a blow, or an arrow maybe, and took a step on the road, as if he’d yearned in his heart to come after her. And he had come after her. She dreamed of him, often, and sometimes she woke with the memory of his lips still warm on hers. Sometimes in the dreams, he was lying in the boat beneath her, staring up at her bound and indignant and conquered, and she almost always jerked out of those, sweating and shivering.

And now, as she stood in the sitting room looking at the girls on Catelyn’s either side by the fire, she couldn’t help thinking, unwillingly, that her terms had been fulfilled: Sansa and Arya were home and safe in Winterfell at last.

But she knew it still wasn’t enough. He hadn’t really cleared the bar she’d set for him. He’d planned to set Sansa free, but he hadn’t done it; it was Lord Tyrion who had persuaded his father to send Sansa home instead. And he hadn’t truly done anything to save Arya, either. He’d given her a horse and some money. That wasn’t anything to marry a man for, and the slaying of the Mad King had been twenty years ago and more. He’d piled so many crimes on top of that good deed that no one could glimpse the gold of it anymore. But that didn’t help her stop thinking about him, and what she’d do if he came to her, and pointed out—smirking, of course he’d be smirking; she could see it—that her conditions had been met, and asked for her again.

She was still worrying it in her head when the king sent for her, the next day. Robb had grown into his crown since the first time she’d met him, so many years ago. At the time she’d thought of him mostly as Lady Catelyn’s son, who ought to be listening more to his mother and her wise counsel. But even then, he’d been a truly remarkable commander. She’d been doubtful of a boy so young leading an army when there were so many seasoned warriors at hand, but those doubts had gone in the first battle she’d seen him fight, a clash against a Lannister company of fifteen thousand men near Ashemark, not long after she and Lady Catelyn had rejoined the army. Many of the Stark forces had been sent out in smaller raiding parties—foolishly, she’d thought—and so their own company that day had been outnumbered by two to one; outweighed in arms as well.

But Robb had made it look as easy as if the advantage had been all in the other direction. Brienne had been at the command post with Catelyn, overlooking the field; she’d seen as he sent men to press the enemy from one side and then another, until he’d baited them forward into a narrow gully with a tempting target of his archers, exposed to a charge of their pikes.

But when the Lannister pikemen had seized that opening, dropping their battered shields to storm the gully, suddenly another thousand archers erupted on the steep hillsides, where he’d evidently sent them to hide the night before, and the Lannister force had melted away like a castle built of sand in the rain of arrows from all sides.

Robb hadn’t even been especially triumphant afterwards; he’d only nodded workmanlike and told Lord Glover, “Right, sort out the wounded and the prisoners of rank, and let’s get the men camped on that high ground to the west for the night,” as if he hadn’t expected anything else—and she’d looked round and saw that all the other men around, those seasoned warriors, hadn’t expected anything else, either: this was what they were following their young king for, what they’d crowned him for, a gift that the gods had put into his hands like a sharpened blade. 

And by the time she’d come back with the news of Arya, Robb had used that blade to carve a realm out of the North and a true king out of himself, too; and more by when he sheathed it than when he used it. Brienne had been deeply sorry to have to tell him and Catelyn of Arya’s cruel words. She hadn’t felt she had the right to conceal them; the words hadn’t been a lie. But she’d felt as if Arya, in her own furious grief, had put a knife in her hand to strike at her own brother, and Brienne had been forced to do it, and see the blow land.

She was glad, now, to see that the wound had been healed: he’d been brighter last night than she’d ever seen him, eyes shining as he’d gazed on his sisters, his restored kin. Even now he still had some of that glow lingering, although as she entered the study, he was gazing ruefully at the tidy triple line of papers laid out upon the desk before him, each separate task in its own stack and topped by a small note in Princess Sansa’s neat handwriting. He abandoned the desk with alacrity and took her over to the fire, and poured her a cup of hot wine from the jug.

“I owe you an apology,” he said, as they sat down together.

“Your Grace?” she said, bewildered.

“After you first came back to us…” he hesitated a little: the scar of the healed injury visible briefly in a heavy look. “I wasn’t myself for a while. And I let myself forget what you’d done for our house, because I didn’t want to think of it. So all this time, I haven’t rewarded you, or even thanked you as your service deserved.” He held up his hand, when she would have protested. “I know you haven’t resented it. That’s all the more reason that I should feel it. What you did, I can’t imagine anyone else doing. All the world—even we—thought Arya surely dead. You took the search on, as hopeless as it looked, and pursued it to the bitter end. And if you hadn’t—I don’t think she’d be home with us now.” He shook his head a little. “It felt touch and go, every step of the way north.”

“I was glad to do it, your Grace,” she said. “I promised your mother willingly.”

“I believe you,” Robb said, smiling at her. “That’s still more reason to show you our—my—gratitude. And if it weren’t enough, you’ve stayed, to guard my mother and my sister. Sansa tells me that you’ve been a great help to her, whenever she’s had to deal with the sort of twats who’d be glad to fuss her if she were alone, and who’d try to speak to a man instead, if she took one with her.”

“My oath wasn’t done,” Brienne said, and she meant it, but she couldn’t help but feel honored by his recognition, a glow of pleasure like gilding upon the greater satisfaction of seeing the girls home and safe and knowing her oath fulfilled.

He nodded. “But now it is. And I would reward you, if there’s anything you want that I can give you. I don’t mean as payment. There’s no money that could buy what you did for us. But I want to do you honor, to recognize what it means to us. That’s part of the honor of my house. I ask you to think on it seriously.”

She said a little helplessly, “Your Grace—I thank you, and I will try, but—I can think of nothing that I need. Princess Sansa has already been most generous. She’s horsed me, and armed me with the best steel of your forges—”

“That’s a gift for us, when you’re using it in our service!” Robb broke in, with laughter in his voice.

“And she and Lady Catelyn have already given me—a place in the world,” Brienne said, with a struggle to put it into words. “I know you’ll say that’s also service, but I still value it, more than I can say. Because I’ve always been out of place.”

And Robb was truly listening to her, leaning forward against his knees with his hands laced, frowning a little. “Because men don’t like a woman who outdoes them in arms and honor,” he said, and fell silent and thoughtful. “You’re the heiress of Tarth,” he said, after a moment. “And I know your father is in his old age. But you’ve left that place, because—you knew you couldn’t hold it. Too many men wouldn’t follow you, not without a husband, and the ones who offered for you, you wouldn’t have.”

He made it a question, and she nodded a little.

“Do you want that?” he said. “If you wish, you can swear fealty to me, as a bannerwoman of House Stark rather than as my mother’s personal bannerwoman, and I’ll defend your claim to Tarth, in your own right.”

She stared at him. “Your Grace, that could mean war. Tarth answers to the Iron Throne.”

“Tarth answers to Storm’s End, where Stannis Baratheon now rules,” Robb said, and her stomach tightened. “My mother told me what he did to his brother Renly, whose Kingsguard you were. Would you be willing to answer to him, if you claimed Tarth?”

“No,” she said, flatly.

He nodded. “So if you’re to have it, you can’t have it from him. Winterfell will stand behind you. And yes, I know that might mean war, either with Storm’s End or the Iron Throne. I don’t make the offer lightly. But I make it nonetheless.”

There wasn’t any bravado in it, or strutting, only a simple offer, honest and plain. And it was her turn to be silent, because she knew that it would mean war. If she went home and claimed Tarth, and refused to bend the knee to Storm’s End, Stannis Baratheon would go to war to defend his rights. And then—Robb Stark would come to war on her behalf. That terrible sword of the gods unsheathed, to strike down the murderer who had killed Renly, and finally avenge his death.

And oh, she wanted it, with deep and savage hunger. It even felt like a just repayment. She’d sworn to avenge Renly, and instead she’d spent years, long years of her life, on a quest to save the daughters of House Stark. She did have a right to ask House Stark to give her that vengeance in return.

She drew a shaky breath and let it out slowly, her eyes stinging. “No,” she said, softly. “I won’t bring you to war against the south. My father has good men, men of honor. He’ll choose one of them to inherit, so long as I keep away.” She wasn’t the same woman who’d made that vow. She wanted Stannis’s blood yet, for Renly and for the gods, and she hoped they’d give it to her someday, but—she’d seen enough of war and bloodshed in the years since then not to bring it down on two realms, and all the innocent people in them.

Robb nodded, accepting her decision. “Not that place, then,” he said. “Would you have a different one? I could give you lands here in the North, to hold in your own right. Or you could marry, if you want—we’d be glad to make a match for you.” He paused and added, brightly, “Sansa tells me Tormund Giantsbane would—” and broke off, grinning at her look of outrage, a teasing boy suddenly.

“No, thank you, Your Grace,” she said, pointedly.

He laughed. “All right, he’ll have to bear the disappointment. Is there a man you’d like?” and the question caught her off guard. “You can name one of your choosing; I’d wager on my mother netting you any man in all of Westeros—” and he paused, frowning, because her face had gone red and miserable, and she knew it and she couldn’t do anything about it. And then, to make things a thousand times worse, Robb blew out a breath and said, “Oh, that twat,” with such vivid annoyance in his voice that she knew instantly that he’d somehow guessed.

“I—your Grace, I—it’s not—I don’t—” she stammered in mortified horror.

“No, Brienne, don’t feel—I don’t blame you for being caught by him,” Robb said, reaching out and putting a hand on her arm, while she struggled; she half wanted to run out of the room, and was half grateful to have the secret out in the open at last, like airing out a thick close room. “He’s not worthless. The gods were generous with their gifts when they made him, and he—he wants to be better than he is.”

That was so much what she’d felt herself that she couldn’t help but be grateful to have it put into words. But she also went still brighter red, because now of course she couldn’t help but think—she’d heard snatches of songs a few times, the rude kind, about the wolf taming the lion. She tried not to listen to that sort of scurrilous gossip. There was so much of it about Robb, and more than half of it was made-up nonsense. But it wasn’t all made-up nonsense; five women had borne him acknowledged children, and the court was full of women and men who claimed to cherish at least one memory of sharing his bed: he was plainly a man of enormous appetite. What if he had—tamed the lion; oh, she didn’t want to think about it, but of course he was just the man that Jaime would have wanted, the same way he wanted her: trying to claw himself up someone else to get just a little closer to honor.

And Robb was looking at her ruefully, as if he were thinking the very same thing. “But he’s not worthy, not of you or any true woman of honor,” he said, low and damning and worst of all honest. “He’s a selfish coward, who’s never been put to a real trial. He hungers to be better, but he’s never made himself so. Instead, he lies to himself: he hasn’t a choice, there’s nothing he can do. He knows better, but he won’t admit it.” She bowed her head and heaved a miserable sigh; she knew he was exactly right—only it didn’t stop her wanting.

Robb ran his hand down his face and groaned a little. “My mother would tell me that what we owe you is to lock you up in a tower and keep you away from him,” he said. “But—if you do want him, I’ll get him for you.”

“You’ll what?” Brienne said, looking up again to stare at him; it came out of her a squeak.

Robb waved a hand. “I already know how to do it. I’ll tell Tywin that he must send Jaime to us as a hostage to marry a bannerwoman of House Stark. I’ll give him an excuse for the demand, I’ll say he must do it if he wants to be able to call on my aid in the south ever again, after that sneak attack he tried, but the truth is, he’ll want to do it. He isn’t getting Jaime married otherwise, and he hasn’t an heir for House Lannister anymore, except distant cousins. He’s sent his other son to Essos; his brother’s old; his nephew’s renounced his family name and gone into the sept. He’ll do it. And Jaime will come like a shot. But… do you truly want such a husband?”

His crisp practicality had eased her embarrassment, and it did help, to have the choice laid out so plainly, and offered up as hers to make. For it made it clear to her that it wouldn’t work. She shook her head a little. “No,” she said, low. “I don’t want him, not like that. I told him that after the vow was fulfilled, and your sisters were safe at home, I’d let him court me. And…I would. If he came to me and asked, I’d do that. But… just arranging a match, and handing myself to him…”

“As if he had nothing more to do, to deserve you,” Robb finished, nodding; he did understand. “And…are you sure there’s no other man who could—divert you?”

She lifted a hand and let it fall in frustration. “I didn’t expect him to divert me.”

“I know I was teasing you, about Tormund,” Robb said after a moment. “Sansa’s told me how he’s made an ass of himself. But that’s how his tribe courts: the more extravagantly a man shows his lust, the higher he values the woman. He’d be willing to be taught how to behave better, if I spoke to him about it. And I can vouch for him. For months we held a camp of two hundred thousand men who hated one another; together we crossed five hundred miles of frozen waste with the dead on our heels. He’s a true man if ever one drew breath.”

She listened, and she believed him. She’d already seen, whenever she’d gone among the Wildlings with Sansa, how they took Tormund’s orders: easily, the way men followed a man who had earned their respect and their trust; a man they would follow even to their own deaths. But that only made it worse, after a moment, because she couldn’t choose to want a true and worthy man, instead of the beautiful golden lion that had got its claws into her, even though she knew she could so easily end up devoured.

She was glad that she didn’t need to say it aloud; Robb was looking at her, and he shook his head. “No, I see it won’t do,” he said. “If it were a matter of the head, you wouldn’t have the trouble to begin with. I understand,” he added, a bit ruefully. She supposed he did; she had more sympathy for him suddenly than she’d had before, when he’d married Queen Talisa against Catelyn’s advice and his own promise. “So it must be him, but he must prove himself a man to you, first. And it will be a trick, getting him to do anything worth your time, because you’d likely do it better yourself, and he must know that in his heart.” He was thinking aloud, his eyes gone distant; Brienne could all but see him working out his plan of battle, the way he’d snap and nip and herd the lion he was hunting into a pen, just like that he’d done with that company of soldiers.

She tried to make up her mind to stop him, to tell him no, that she didn’t want it done, and turn him away from the whole idea onto something else. But she still hadn’t been able to make herself do it when his mouth twitched and his eyes went bright and he suddenly grinned at her, full of slyness and mirth and something else she didn’t recognize, only after a moment she did: a predatory look, and she stared at him with her eyes wide, an uncomfortable squirming in her belly. She’d never understood before what made people come to his bed so eagerly, when there were so many others in it.

“Your Grace,” she said, a little strangled, because—she might understand, but—

“I know,” he said, still grinning. “You don’t want to share, and I can’t have a woman who doesn’t want to, because I’m already given. But he doesn’t know that I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“What?” Brienne said.

“That would be a start, wouldn’t it?” Robb said. “For he does fear me. He must come North, not because I’ve offered you to him, but to save you from the jaws of the wolf, when he hears that they’re rending you. And if he doesn’t…it’ll free you, I hope. The worst thing about him is that you can see what he could be, if he chose. But in the end, what matters is what we do, not could or might have. If he doesn’t come, you’ll know not to regret him.”

“Yes,” Brienne said, with a sensation of deep relief, as though he’d taken a heavy weight from her back. It would free her. She’d first wanted Jaime because he’d wanted her; because he’d seen her and wanted her. But if he didn’t want her enough to be a man of honor, then he didn’t truly want her after all.

Robb nodded. “And if he does come, then I’ll set him a task, to claim you from me. I won’t make it easy,” he added, serious, looking to see that she agreed. “It won’t be a lie. It must be something to make me truly think him worthy of you, as much as if he’d come to court one of my sisters. For that’s the reward you’ve earned of us: to know that you have House Stark at your back. And that means the care I’d have not for a bannerman, but for a kinswoman.”

 Brienne discovered that she was blinking away tears; she smiled at him, a little tremulous. “You honor me, your Grace,” she said, softly.

“You’ll have to get used to calling me Robb,” he said, grinning at her again. “And in fairness, I must warn you, we will try to divert you, if we can. If I know my mother, the instant she learns of this plan, she’ll be out catching every other fish in the sea to dangle before you.”

“Your Grace!” Brienne had to bridle her first urgent protest. “I wouldn’t ask you to deceive her, but—”

Robb snorted. “You and I are to keep this from my mother? Not unless we both fall on our own swords without even leaving this room,” and Brienne was forced to acknowledge to her dismay that he was right. “No, you’ll have to endure it until he comes, and likely until the day you’re wed, if not after. I’m afraid that’s the price of sheltering in a den of wolves: a great many noses in your business.”

He wasn’t wrong: Catelyn cornered her the next day, not two hours after Robb had left her chamber in the morning—he’d slept on the rug at the hearth, with his wolf, and looked indignant when she’d tried to offer him the bed—and spoke to her so urgently and earnestly that Brienne felt even more sympathy with Robb: there was almost a worse pain in hearing such sensible advice, from one she knew wanted only the best for her, when she could not bear to follow it.

“You should disdain to speak to Jaime Lannister in the street, much less marry him.” Catelyn caught her hands tightly in her own. “Brienne, you have brought my daughters back to me; let me stand in your mother’s place now. Let me make a match for you, a match that she would have looked on with favor: with a good and honorable man, who will stand up beside you all the days of your life and his. That is what we owe you, not to make some scheme of handing you over to that—worthless wretch. I could wring Robb’s neck for even thinking of it!” she added, furiously.

“My lady,” Brienne said, swallowing against the clenching sensation tight in her throat. “My lady, he didn’t wish to, any more than you do. But…if I could put Ser Jaime out of my mind, I would have.”

“What you need to put him out of your mind is a better man,” Catelyn said, and she did, indeed, begin to try and offer Brienne one after another of them, despite her mortification.

“If a better man could put him out of her mind, she wouldn’t want him in the first place!” Robb said, trying to defend her against being forced to escort yet another handsome and eligible man around the keep. The latest was a bannerman of House Tully,  who had come to visit Winterfell on the excuse of bringing gifts from Lady Catelyn’s brother for Prince Brandon’s birthday.

But Catelyn only wheeled on Robb in a fury. “And if she thought that she wanted to thrust her hand into a fire, would you build one, and encourage her to do it?” she said savagely. “How dare you speak to me of lust, as if it were a sensible cause. You may indulge your own hungers as you wish. What do you think her life will be like if she becomes the wife of this man, a man stained with every dishonor in the world? I see nothing before her but misery and degradation, and you would make him welcome to the chance? If you had any true care for her, you would bar the gates against him and hound him straight out of the North if he had the gall to come, instead of speaking against Lord Dunsimore!”

Robb was wincing before her, looking an apology over at Brienne. “I’d be glad to escort him, my lady,” Brienne said, and went to show Lord Dunsimore around the keep before dinner, and to try again while she did. For she was trying; she knew Catelyn was right, and it was her duty to herself to see if she could put Jaime Lannister out of her mind. But it didn’t work any better that time than it had the ten times before. She wondered a little glumly, watching Lord Dunsimore ride away three days later, after the feast was over, whether Robb was right, and she liked Jaime for being worse.

And as if to taunt her, that night, as on every night after she’d tried hardest to put Jaime out of her mind, she dreamed of him again. This time of that moment in the bed, in the Red Keep, with him over her, warm and urgent, his mouth close against her, only this time she wasn’t wearing her armor, and he was speaking softly in her ear, saying, “Brienne. Brienne. Wake up,” and she opened her eyes and stared up at him; he was there in her bedchamber, bending over her, his face grim and hard and furious, in dun leather and a dark cloak, with a month’s growth of beard.

“You’re here,” she said stupidly, staring up at him. She hadn’t asked Robb or Sansa if he’d left King’s Landing. She hadn’t wanted to know.

“And now we’re leaving,” he hissed. “Get up. Where are your—” and he stopped, with his breath catching, as a blade suddenly gleamed out of the dark at his throat.

“Don’t move,” Arya said, a disembodied voice speaking from the other end. “It’s really sharp. If you move, it’ll cut you. Come in,” she called, and the doors opened; five men came in and seized him and dragged him out.

Brienne sat up in the bed, shocked and only just awake; it almost could still have been part of the dream. “Wait! Arya—”  

The blade had vanished back into the dark as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t worry,” Arya said. “Robb’s given them orders; no one’s going to hurt him. Get dressed. They’re taking him to the Great Hall,” and she turned and went out the door and shut it behind her.

Brienne rushed into the Hall, dressed in haste, to find Robb sitting in stern judgement, and not alone: Catelyn and Sansa and Arya were all there standing ranged around him. Prince Rickon, who had arrived two weeks before to see his sister, was sitting on the steps of the dais, an ominously hulking presence in his heavy furred cloak and thick beard and long hair: though he was only fifteen, he’d already got enough of his growth to make him a large man. Even the direwolves were gathered in the room, lying sprawled before the vast central hearth, their gleaming eyes fixed on Jaime, who was standing at the foot of the throne with his hands pinioned behind him.

“Well, Lannister?” Robb said. “Now you’re sneaking into my keep at night like a thief to abduct a bannerwoman of my house?”

“Would you prefer it if I’d tried to murder you instead?” Jaime said defiantly. “Don’t be absurd. What was I going to do, carry Brienne off slung like a sack over my shoulder? You’re the one who’s been insulting her. Or were you under the impression you were rewarding her instead?”

“And that’s what you’re here to do, is it?” Robb said. “To reward her? I suppose you do owe her quite the debt, for saving your life, and carrying out your oaths. How did you mean to pay it?”

“Unlike you, Stark, my intentions are honorable,” Jaime said. “Quite the reversal, it seems.”

“But you thought that you’d start by stealing her away from her friends?”

“Oddly enough, I wasn’t sure of my welcome,” Jaime said. “I can’t imagine what’s given me any doubts. Maybe it was the letter telling me that if I was caught with so much as a toe over the border at Moat Cailin, my throat would be slit and my carcass hung up for the crows.”

Brienne looked at Robb in surprise, but he looked surprised as well—for a moment; then he turned to look at Lady Catelyn, whose face was utterly unrepentant and hard as stone. “And so it should be,” she said coldly.

Robb glanced over at Brienne, a little ruefully. “Lady Brienne, you’ve heard what he’s saying; would you welcome his suit?”

Jaime didn’t turn around to look at her, but he tilted his head a little, listening for her answer, his shoulders tight. Brienne swallowed and said, a little stifled, “Your Grace—I did tell Ser Jaime that he might court me, once Sansa and Arya had returned safely to Winterfell.”

“And that’s what you’re here to do,” Robb said Jaime. “To court her? And you think you’ve earned the right to do that, because…she saved my sisters? While you sat on your arse in the Red Keep?”

“Well, she didn’t provide any other conditions,” Jaime said. “Did you have some in mind?”

He threw it at Robb, all but inviting him to issue the challenge, herded tidily into position; only before Robb could speak, Catelyn stepped forward and said, “I do,” cold as ice, and added to Robb sharply, “Brienne is my bannerwoman, not yours. The oaths she fulfilled were made to me. It is my doing that she ever met this worthless beast, and my duty to protect her from him.”

“I think it’s for her to decide just how much protecting she wants, isn’t it?” Jaime said. “Or is she your prisoner now?”

Catelyn wheeled on him. “If Brienne should choose to leave us and go with you, I will pray to the Mother every day for her safety and her happiness, no matter how little hope I will have of either. But gods forbid that I should let an unworthy churl court her in my house. You will not do it, I swear before the Mother herself that I will leap from the tower of this keep if Robb lets you do it, until you have truly made amends for your crimes, and proven yourself even half the worth of the woman whose hand you want.

“She brought back my daughters, the vow you made in exchange for your own miserable life, and did nothing to keep. Go then, Jaime Lannister, and never show your face here again until you bring back my son, my boy whom you crippled for your cowardice and your lust and your greed: alive, if he lives, or his bones if he is dead. And when you have done that, you may think yourself worthy to beg on your knees for Brienne of Tarth to marry you, and not a moment before.”

Catelyn walked off the dais and went past him and down the full length of the hall, her footsteps echoing on the flagstones in a heavy silence that lasted until she had gone out, and the great bronze doors had swung shut again behind her with a deep clang, like a bell. Brienne felt a dreadful thickness in her throat, a knot of sorrow. Robb’s face was stricken, gazing after his mother in horrified dismay, but even as she went from the chamber, it began to fade; a hard grim look settled into him instead, and when he turned his gaze back to Jaime, who was staring up at him, he said quietly, “You’ve heard my mother’s words, Ser Jaime. House Stark stands behind them. Come no more to Winterfell, unless you come with word of Bran.” He gestured to the guards. “Take him to the gates, and let him have his arms and his horse.”

Brienne went back to her room and put on the rest of her clothes and her armor, as many layers as she could manage beneath her mail, and swung her heavy Northern cloak around her shoulders; she belted on her swords, and took up her pack: she had formed the habit of keeping it ready and in order. Then she went down to the courtyard. Jaime was just outside the gates, already mounted and looking in anxiously; when he saw her, he made a small jerking movement, and then stopped, waiting.

Robb was in the courtyard, his face bleak. “I’m sorry,” he said, low.

She shook her head. “You said it yourself,” she said. “It couldn’t be a lie. And Lady Catelyn’s right, too. That crime should live in him every minute of the day, and it makes it worse that it doesn’t. It must bar the way. And what else could he do to make up for it?”

Robb nodded. He knew it, too. He stepped in and took her in his arms and kissed her cheek, like a brother, and said quietly, “May the old gods and the new watch over you.” He gave her a ring from his hand, with the direwolf on it, and beckoned to the guards to bring her horse; they’d already had it waiting for her.

She rode out. As soon as the gates were closed behind her, Jaime said to her, with a jaunty air, “I suppose I should be grateful to Lady Catelyn. I was expecting Stark to make me jump through at least a dozen hoops. Let’s go. I’ll get us passage in White Harbor.” He even turned his horse and went a little way down the road before he realized she wasn’t following him and wheeled around to see her face. “Have you lost your mind?” he said. “He’s been missing for seven years. We wouldn’t even find teeth. Listen to me. In five days, we’ll be married and on a ship for—”

“Stop it!” Brienne said; she couldn’t bear listening to the cowardice spilling from his mouth. It was worse that he’d say it, and it was worse that he’d come; that he’d come in the face of a mortal threat to have her, to save her. Like living on the edge of a knife, bleeding on both sides. “Just—stop pretending, for once in your life!” He went still and rigid, his mouth a straight line. “Catelyn Stark didn’t give you that challenge because she expects you to find her son. She did it to protect me from this, and I’m grateful to her. Join you in this shadow life, where you have to lie to yourself for every minute of every day that honor doesn’t matter? That it’s all right, the things you’ve done, because they’ve made you rich and powerful and well-fed? Do you think I’d be here in the first place, do you think I’d be who I am, if I cared about any of that?”

She stopped, looking a challenge at him, and after a moment he said, short and stiff, “No.”

She gave a single nod. “No. Either I’m going north with you, to help you find Bran Stark, or I’m going back inside those gates alone. Which is it?”

He looked away from her, towards the south, his jaw working. After a moment he bit out, “I suppose it’s out of the question to go get supplies in the winter town first?”

“We’re on the business of House Stark,” she said impatiently. “We’ll use the waystations.” She turned her horse north, and started towards the Wolfswood. After a moment she heard the hooves of his horse following her on the frozen road, and he drew alongside her; he didn’t look at her, only forward at the darkness under the heavy pine boughs ahead, his face drawn as hard as marble.

Chapter Text

Despite winter, traffic along the kingsroad had grown even since the last time Brienne had traveled with Sansa; there were more waystations opened, and the waykeepers had been building small storm shelters between them, at least a shed every few miles, to make it quick and safe. The stations were crowded with travelers, merchants and couriers and ordinary folk returning to their homes after visiting over Winterfair. But the direwolf ring on her hand got them a room and provisions and fresh horses at every one, and Jaime found every excuse he could to spend gold on something or other: a warmer tent, spare socks, better food and drink. She didn’t argue; why shouldn’t he put money into the pockets of Northern tradesmen? Occasionally there were Wildling travelers, and Brienne took the chance to speak with them, and ask them for advice. There would be good maps at Castle Black, but she’d learned enough about the dangers of the North, of winter, to be sure that there would be still greater ones beyond the Wall, and to want to know anything she could.

But even so, they were alone on the road for most of the day, only the crunching of their horses’ hooves and the stillness of the forest, which was so deep that it almost felt like a sound instead. Jaime broke the silence often, to talk or tease or joke or sing. It reminded her of their journey to King’s Landing, only he wasn’t trying to annoy her all of the time, and she wasn’t trying to guard herself against him. The first time he made her laugh, it almost brought her low: he went almost instantly from a jerk of surprise to delight, and straight on from there to a lust so vivid that she stopped laughing at once and went red, and as soon as he knew he’d betrayed himself, he threw all pride to the wind and came at her.

It shouldn’t have worked; they were both on horseback, in leather and mail and heavy cloaks. But he dropped his reins and still managed to bring his horse in right alongside hers and catch her face in his hands and kiss her, and even while the horses kept walking, he kept kissing her, hungry devouring kisses, and then he was even kissing along her jaw, and to her throat, nuzzling. She was dazed and breathless, and time stopped meaning anything; she didn’t know how much of it had passed, how long he’d been kissing her; she was just existing from one kiss to the next, feeling them glowing through her, until he started trying to find a way into her armor, and then she caught his hands and drew back, gulping for breath.

“We’re on our way to our deaths,” Jaime said.

“We’re on our way to danger, and hard work, and privation,” Brienne said. “What if I got with child?”

“You weren’t worrying about it in Winterfell!” Jaime said. “For all you know, you could be with child already.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Brienne said pointedly.

“I think Stark’s sired ten brats by now; he gets them in a single night sometimes!”

“I haven’t gone to bed with him to get one!”

“What do you mean?” Jaime sounded less jealous than confused. “There were twelve confirmed reports of him leaving your chambers.”

“He was sleeping on the floor! And what do you mean, twelve?” Brienne said. “How many spies do you have in Winterfell?”

Jaime was still looking bewildered; he made an impatient dismissive wave of his hand. “Varys has spies, Father has spies, the Tyrells have spies, Baelish has spies. Tyrion probably has spies, now that I think about it. What do you expect? He could take it into his head to come south and kill us all from one day to the next. Of course we’re watching him.”

“He’s not going to come south unless you provoke him,” Brienne said. “If you were all so worried, you shouldn’t have tried to ambush him on the kingsroad.”

Jaime grimaced. “If I’d known Father was going to, I’d have stopped it. But I’d have stopped it because it wouldn’t have worked,” he added, defiantly. “Stark’s coming, sooner or later! He’s already got six sons, and all of them healthy. If he doesn’t go to war with us, to give them all their own lands, they’ll tear the North apart between them. I don’t care how loving and sweet they are now,” he added, seeing her glaring indignation. “They’re puppies. I’m sure that monster of his was small and adorable too, when it first whelped. And what do you mean, he was sleeping on the floor? Why was he sleeping on the floor?”

“So you’d get reports of him leaving my room,” Brienne said, because she wasn’t going to lie about it. Jaime stared at her with open-mouthed indignation as he understood, and they rode the rest of the day without speaking to one another anymore, which was just as well.

But when they came to the next waystation, late that night, there was only one chamber left, a small one with only a single bed, and Jaime said, wheedling, “There are other things we could do, you know.”

“Yes, and when people do them, they end up doing the other one, too,” Brienne said firmly. “I don’t mind sleeping in the taproom.”

He snarled under his breath and took his cloak and went out of the room to go sleep downstairs, but he’d still managed to hook his claws in a little deeper; she lay awake almost the entire night with his mouth on her lips, on her throat, and wondering what the other things might be like. She almost wished she had gone to bed with Robb after all. She wouldn’t have wanted to share a lover, but she would willingly share a friend; she could have asked him for that, just to know, and then perhaps she wouldn’t be spending a night tossing with feverish heat.

It didn’t get any better the rest of the way to the Wall. Jaime didn’t stop trying, of course, but she could have managed that, holding the siege; the harder part was the traitor inside the walls. And Jaime knew it; even when she shut the door in his face at night, he smiled at her over the table the next morning while they broke their fast, the pleased smirk of a hunter who saw the prey starting to flag.

But they’d reached the edge of the Wolfswood by then, the trees petering out into snowy plains, and she had a respite; the waykeeper at the last station gave them a team of reindeer and a sleigh, and as they drove on into the Gift, they passed their nights instead in the new villages clustering around the kingsroad, settlements full of Wildlings and Essenes. A great longhouse stood in the center of each one, the first shelters built, with many smaller houses now clustering around them. The Wildlings had built them of wattle and daub, but the walls had been limewashed and painted with dyed milk in elaborate Essene patterns, each one a burst of defiant color against the snow.

Brienne knew that Sansa had sent grain and goats to see most of these villages through their first winter, which was how they’d grown so quick, thanks to the freed labor of all those men; they couldn’t farm in this season, but most of them had broken ground during the false spring, and when the true spring came, they’d be ready to plant.

She slept in the longhouses with the women and children who didn’t yet have their own homes, safe in their company, and Jaime was distracted himself: he frowned darkly as he saw the thriving new settlements, and she caught him counting men of fighting age wherever they stopped along the way. He plainly didn’t like the numbers, and he sat scowling in a corner, the night in the longhouse at White Barrow, when the entire village burst together into an enthusiastic rendition of Follow The Wolf, a new song of the escape from the Milkwater that the minstrel Vervain had lately written. Robb had flatly forbidden it to ever be sung in Winterfell again the instant he’d come back and heard it, a ban which Sansa had equally flatly overridden.

“It’s a pack of lies!” he’d snarled at Sansa. “I was a fool who mistook the power of his enemies, I had to throw away the lives of a thousand men just to get away. Wendel’s the only hero of the tale, him and the men who held the line to save us!”

“I don’t care,” she’d said, unyielding. “It’s useful. That one song might save us a war,” and perhaps she’d been right, judging by Jaime’s grim look. The village’s raven-keeper had only one raven for the south, for Oldtown, but even though the city was far out of the way, Jaime paid the ludicrous sum of three gold dragons to send the bird with a letter to be forwarded on to the Red Keep.

Brienne didn’t object; she hoped it would only make Tywin Lannister less likely to provoke Robb, no matter how many sons he might have. She herself had been asking in every village for any survivors of the Milkwater, older Wildlings; she hoped some of them might remember Bran, or anything of how he’d gone. And there was one in White Barrow: a dour iron-haired woman, one of the village elders, who went silently out of the longhouse during the singing. One of the villagers told her she was Hretha of the Willow, and that she’d been at the battle.

The next morning before they left, Brienne tracked her down at her own house, a handsome place of two rooms with an attic, with an Essene woman in the back room weaving at a standing loom, and an older girl tending the pot on the stove and minding a young boy.

“Aye,” Hretha said shortly. “I was there. I don’t need to hear songs made of it. My man lies beneath the Milkwater, where he fell with the Manderly.”

“So what actually happened?” Jaime demanded of her; he was still seething since the night before.

“You heard,” she said. “The song only puts a lot of fat on the meat and bones.” Her tone was final, unwilling to say more. But while she told Brienne all she knew of the valley, and what little she remembered having seen of Bran’s small company, Jaime mastered his temper and marshaled his charm instead. He went into the village and bought a jug of strong honey brandy, and from a visiting trader a set of cups of polished horn rimmed with silver, which he brought back to her as a gift in thanks for her aid; after he’d poured her two brimming cups, with a winning smile, he finally managed to wheedle more of the tale from her.

“They came at us at nightfall, no warning,” she said. “I was taking in some wash, up on the hill. Saw them coming as the light went off the mountainside. Like an anthill swarming, coming down into the valley. Dead men, clawing, biting. Tips of their fingers mostly rotted away to bone. Their bodies were thick and hard, frozen flesh. Our fighters couldn’t hew them with axe or sword. Soon as they killed a man, he got up again with them.”

Hretha scratched a narrow sketch of the valley in the dirt of her yard, and made a circle near one end and pointed to it. “There was the hill fort. We all ran for it. I had my youngest with me; my man Kvarin got our two older boys to me, then went to fight with the others to keep them off. They were already all around us. I was with the other women, huddled around our littles, trying to keep them quiet. But we knew we were just waiting for them to get through.

“Then the king said we were to run for the valley pass. He had his lancers break a path out, and sent the Manderly to hold the line across the Milkwater. The best of our fighters, they went to help. Kvarin kissed me and the boys and went. The king got the rest of us out behind them. Ran us south for two nights before he let us stop for the first time, in sunlight.

“After that…it was another month, marching through winter, just ahead of the dead. He had us back on our feet every time he caught their scent on the wind. Got us enough sleep and food to keep us moving. His men and beasts carried our littles, when they could. He told us he’d get us south of the Wall, and he did.” She shrugged, a small gesture.

Brienne saw the retreat more clearly in her plain spare telling of it than in the song: the desperate narrowness of the escape and the horror of the inhuman horde, wanting not only to defeat but to devour them; the grinding toil of the journey, a single pack running behind their leader across the terrible waste, hoping to get to safety.

Jaime didn’t like it any better. “And how many of these dead men were there really?” he said. “A hundred thousand? Two?”

“The number didn’t need growing to make a song,” Hretha said.

“A million dead men?” Jaime said. “And they all just…went away?”

“Haven’t seen them since,” Hretha said. “The king’s had men as far north as Thenn country, looking. Some of our people have gone back.” She sighed a little. “We meant to ourselves, me and Kvarin, when we went to join Mance Rayder. Willow Grove was our place, on the Antler. The last place where the leaves change. Naught but pines and weirwoods, further north. We had a house there that my grandfather built. We’d only wanted to get south for the winter, away from the Others.

“But soon as we had a roof over our heads again here, my eldest took the king’s oath, and went for a soldier. Said he’d follow a man to hell, who’d brought us out of it.” She jerked her head towards the house. “Lady Sansa sent men north asking us to take in the eastlings. I took in Katarzina and her girl. Now my second boy’s promised to her, when she’s old enough. So I guess this is my place now.” She drained her cup again.

#

Jaime was sullen and irritated after, angry all over again that there were men of honor in the world, who weren’t fools, and who had justly earned the admiration and love of those who looked to them, and not merely their dread and fear. He tried to pretend otherwise, of course. “You don’t really believe this nonsense of dead men, do you?” he said to her later, as they drove away from the village. “Walking corpses, a million of them? They all went winter-mad, trapped up there; they started drunk quarreling and made up the story to explain the murders, so they wouldn’t have feuds with the Wildlings they’d let into the Gift.”

“I’d sooner believe in a million walking corpses than believe that Robb Stark made them up,” Brienne said. “And you don’t believe it either!” she added.

He scowled. “Fine, they didn’t make it up! There was some tribe up in the far north, they painted themselves blue and came at them in force—”

He tried several other explanations on her, every break they had the next three days, and then on the third day the Wall came into sight. Jaime stopped talking entirely as it grew across the horizon, a terrible rearing height that was nothing like the walls of any keep, nothing even like the snow-covered mountains of Tarth. The only thing Brienne had ever seen to compare were the towers of Moat Cailin, in their immensity and silence, but they were still only towers. The Wall was a wrongness in the world, a blasphemy almost: a line drawn by mortal hands across the work of the gods. She understood why it had silenced Jaime: it was impossible, and there it stood. There wasn’t a way to make it fit into the ordinary world. Why shouldn’t there be an army of dead men on the other side?

They were met at Castle Black by the Lord Commander, Ser Alliser Thorne, a surly man who offered no very gracious welcome, and more warmly by the chief archivist, Samwell Tarly, who had prepared a great many maps for them, and all the latest scouting reports from beyond the Wall. “If anyone could have made it, all these years, it’s Jon Snow,” he said earnestly, as he showed them the records. “I’ve never lost hope myself.”

“I don’t know whether to call that relentless optimism or insanity,” Jaime said, disdainful, flicking through the maps. “It looks like you’ve had men cover every square inch of ground between here and the Shivering Sea. Do you think he’s been hiding from you?”

Brienne had to admit there was some justice in Jaime’s question, but Sam put up his chin and said, “He hasn’t gone anywhere else.” Jaime glared at him, and made no further protests.

The first stretch of their journey was unexpectedly easy. The weather mostly held, and the Night’s Watch had roads now into the lands beyond the Wall, of a sort: great platforms of snow packed solid, running at times above a windswept barren stretch of land, and sometimes between great towering drifts on either side. Teams of men with reindeer on ploughs and heavy oxen pulling rollers traveled in a great circuit among the scouting stations that Robb had established; they passed several of them as they went, their light sleigh doing a quick pace, and to Brienne’s surprise they even met some tradesmen on the road, going between the stations by dog sled with small luxuries for the scouts.

The last of those stations stood in the valley of the Milkwater, on the very fortified hilltop of which the Wildling woman had spoken. There were few signs of battle left; the bodies of the dead had long since been gathered and burned. But many of the makeshift huts that had sheltered two hundred thousand Wildlings still stood around the hill, and around the openings, there were marks of bloody fingerprints grasping, of deep gouges into the wood.

Down by the riverside stood a great pillar of hard black stone, and on it graven the name MANDERLY. When they went to look at it more closely, beneath the name was engraved Here fell Ser Wendel Manderly of White Harbor, second son of Lord Wyman Manderly, and his men, with many Wildling warriors at their side, in the valiant defense of the retreat from the Milkwater: steadfast to the end in the face of horrors, giving their lives to save thirty-five thousand souls from the legions of the dead. Beneath that, all their names: nearly two thousand men in all. Brienne found upon it the name of Hretha’s man: Kvarin of the Willow, halfway down the list. Jaime was looking down into the river, grim-faced: the surface was frozen solid and clear, and beneath the ice you could see to either side a vast litter of broken blades and arrowheads, preserved in the deep like amber, and here and there half-rotted corpses, dressed in rags, mingled with the bodies of fallen soldiers in their mail.

The next morning they left the station, with five ravens in a cage to take along, so she could send a message if they found anything. They went back out of the valley down to the place where the Milkwater met the Bitter, the longer river that ran all the way north, along the Frostfangs, towards the land the Wildlings called Always Winter. That was as much as anyone knew of Bran’s trail: he and Jon Snow and their company of Wildlings had driven away north, along the Bitter’s frozen length.

Following that trail, the two of them soon came into a country that seemed truly untouched and untouchable. On the west, the Frostfangs rose like jagged teeth, savagely bared and barren. On the east, the dark pine forest that grew in the wind-shelter of the mountains was deep and silent. There were no bird calls, almost no sounds of animals; only wind and creaking trees and cracking ice, their own breathing and their footsteps, the crunching of the reindeer hooves. They had left behind their sleigh, which would slow them in any deep-drifted snow, and put on snowshoes instead; the reindeer carried their packs, and each night Jaime dug out dead grass and picked boughs off pine trees, to give them along with their grain. The beasts weren’t heavily loaded. The scouts had given them a map of the depots which the Starks had laid down throughout the far north, where they could replenish their supplies. They could travel light and go straight on into the north for months before they would start to run short.

It was hard to believe that men could live here, but Samwell Tarly had shown her on the maps where a dozen different Wildling tribes had marked out territories. A few of them were even inhabited once again, just as Hretha had told them: once a week or so, they would see a thread of smoke rising from a small settlement. And even among these people who had gone back beyond the Wall to their ancient homes, the direwolf ring won them a warm welcome: Sansa had gifted the people returning with supplies of food and drink, and had mediated and settled many old quarrels over tribal boundaries, deliberately hoping to preserve a bond of friendship that would reach across the Wall. Most of the villages now sent a trader south to Castle Black twice a year, with a load of furs, and to bring back some goods and news of the wider world.

But as she and Jaime continued on their northward course, the settlements grew more scarce, and for two weeks they saw no other living man or beast. They were glad to crest a hill one morning to see a few huts clustered upon a raised riverbank in the distance. But as they drew close, Jaime stopped, and as one, they both drew their blades. They stood a few moments, watching for any sign of movement, and then cautiously made an approach; Jaime motioned her to hold the reindeer, and keep watch from the front, and went prowling forward himself around the back, edging close enough to look inside one of the huts, and then he backed away and looked across the snow at her, his face grim.

There were no corpses left inside, but stains enough to show where they had been, and the dragging footsteps that had tracked through the pooled blood afterwards. The attack hadn’t been recent; the huts were beginning to collapse, snow fallen in through holes in the roofs and the few stores tumbled over and spoiled by rooting animals. A family of stoats were nesting in one corner, shining black eyes watchful on them.

Without discussion, they left as soon as they were certain there was nothing else stirring in the village, even though there were several huts intact enough to give them shelter from the icy wind. When they’d gone half a mile away, Jaime went back with a bushy pine branch and swept over the village and backed away from it in their tracks, stirring the deep snow up to hide their footprints, and fluffing it so the wind would smooth it over. Until there was a fresh snowfall, there would be some sign of passage to a close look, but less easily sighted from a distance. Afterwards, they went on as quickly as they could; even after the desolate place vanished again behind another hill, they kept going long into the cold dark winter night.

It was the last sign of any human habitation they saw. Even the Wildling tribes who claimed hunting ranges in this country would only ever have come here in summer, following the great herds of reindeer and elk, and made their winter homes further to the south. The great forest began to thin out, into stunted one-sided trees hunching away from a biting, nearly constant northern wind that bowed their own heads as they struggled on into its face. The Bitter more and more lived up to its name. Only the steady dotted line of supply depots carried onward alongside the river.

But seven weeks on, when Brienne came out of her tent in the morning, next to the very last supply depot marked on their maps, she found a stranger squatting by the remnants of their fire, waiting for them to wake: a small Wildling man in unusual patchwork clothing made of rabbit furs stitched together, very pale-skinned with large dark eyes. He had come with a pair of sacks, to take some grain away with him.

He spoke only a few words of the common tongue, and his tribe’s home wasn’t marked on her map at all. He led her and Jaime up a tributary of the river into the mountains and through a narrow file into a valley filled with steaming puddles, where his silent, gentle people lived in caves at the base of the cliffs, warmed with steam. She saw no signs among them of any weapon larger than a stone blade, not even hunting spears; they raised snowy-white rabbits and grew enormous mushrooms in the deeper caves, and caught eels out of a vast underground lake surrounded by twisting columns and pointed pillars.

They called themselves only the quiet people, and their cavern walls were painted lavishly with lime and ochre, pictures of reindeer and rabbits and pines, and one enormous pale ribbon of an eel’s body that wound throughout all the complex of caves. They barely spoke a word of greeting, but gave them warm stone bowls full of grain and mushroom porridge cooked with rabbit meat, and afterwards took her and Jaime silently into their caverns and straight to a deep chamber full of warm and hot pools, carved out of the solid rock, with clever channels supplying the water, for them to bathe in.

It was a welcome respite from the dulling cold of the journey, from the heavy isolation. Brienne realized afterwards that she couldn’t remember the last time she and Jaime had even spoken to one another. They’d begun to grow as silent and cold as the landscape, as if winter had begun to creep into their bodies. She submerged deeply into the hottest water for as long as she could stand and came out again into the cool air gasping, and heard his deep groan from the men’s pool as he surfaced as well. He wiped his face and pushed his hands through his beard and his mane of hair to loosen the strands, thick with sweat and dirt, and looked at her with his eyes dark and hungry across the cavern. She tried to be glad that the pools were firmly divided between men and women.

The quiet people only gazed at her with no response when she said, “Mance Rayder?” or asked them about the King in the North. It seemed they had never left to flee south, and somehow had managed to stay hidden from the dead all this while. She wondered at their having exposed themselves, but when she tried as best she could to both thank them, and ask why they had risked bringing them inside, the elders pointed to the sacks of grain they had brought from the supply depot and put their hands together over their lips and bowed, a gesture of thanks, grateful for the supplies that had been seeing them through the long winter. She supposed it must have seemed to them almost a gift of grace, stumbling upon the great cache of grain and dried food while foraging warily out to the forest. They didn’t seem to have any idea of it being connected to an army.

But when without much hope she drew out the pictures she’d brought with her, sketches of Jon Snow and Bran Stark, after a silent exchange of looks among them, the elders nodded to the young man who had guided them there, and he rose and took them along the path of the painted eel, deep into the caverns and through a long tunnel, to one great central chamber full of steam with a single deep pool at its heart, slowly bubbling, where the head and the tail met: plainly a sacred space. And in that chamber, on the far wall opposite the joined ends of the eel, was painted a great figure of a white wolf, curled in sleep, with one red eye cracked open.

Their guide took a bucket of steaming-hot water from the pool and led them back out to the entrance of the valley, where he poured it over the thick drifts of piled snow. As they melted away to reveal smooth deep ice below, Jaime knelt frowning to stare through it at the alien corpse buried within: manlike but too gaunt and tall, with pale blue skin, its thin lips pulled back from bared blackened teeth in a grimace of hate. It had been cleanly beheaded, and it was surrounded by the hacked-apart corpses of a dozen wights, as if a small scouting party of that dreadful army had discovered the valley, but had been slain by a party of warriors unlike any of the people who lived here, armed with at least one blade that could slay the White Walkers.

Brienne managed with what the quiet people knew of the common speech and stick figure drawings made with charcoal to work out that Bran and Jon Snow had indeed stopped here on their way north, with their Wildling companions. It was hard to be certain that the quiet people and she were understanding time the same way, but she strongly suspected the company had made far worse time from the Milkwater than she and Jaime: likely all the men had been under heavy packs, having to carry enough food for the entire journey, and dragging Bran Stark along, traveling through a country full of wights. And once they had arrived, they had certainly stayed for some time: the quiet people drew her five moons waxing and waning again, and many eels being dried on racks, and showed her several great racks of antlers that had evidently been left behind in their own stores, being gradually used to make useful tools. “They must have stopped here to replenish their supplies,” Brienne said, gladly.

“Wonderful,” Jaime said. “Where did they go is the question,” and to that, the quiet people had no answer. Brienne showed them every one of the maps, and even took their guide to the entrance to the valley and pointed in one direction and then another, but they all only gazed at her in the unblinking silence that meant they could tell her nothing. Only at the last, when she asked them where else in the further north someone might survive the winter, the three elders who spoke the common tongue all said together at once, “Nowhere,” a bleak and certain chorus.

But she sent one of her ravens winging south anyway, to share this small crumb of news that she knew would still be as good as a feast to the Starks, even if she feared it might only raise false hopes, no matter her warnings; she wrote as well to tell Sansa that the cache would need refilling, sure that she would be more than glad to repay the quiet people tenfold for their hospitality to Bran and Jon.

She and Jaime spent two more days and nights in the caverns of the quiet people, thawing themselves out. It was hard to leave the warm close embrace again, now when they knew too well what was waiting for them, the savage, sharpened jaws of winter. There was no hope of any friendly shelter up ahead, and they would go out into it with no direction to follow at all. On the third night, as she laid out their next day’s course on the map between them, for discussion, Jaime gave her a sharp, cutting smile, a raised brow, and only said, “One way’s as good as another, don’t you think?” in a light, mocking tone, saying without words how little chance of success he saw in the enterprise, and her own briefly raised hope went sinking low again.

Late that next day after she and Jaime trudged out again, the knife-blade wind out of the north sharpened into a thousand needles, and the temperature dropped sharply. They managed to find a stand of small barren shrubs for just a little shelter from the wind, and doubled up their tents into one; they squeezed the reindeer into it before they squeezed themselves in between.

Brienne was still shivering even under all the covers they could pile on. It wasn’t a physical cold by then. She felt the winter trying to get at her again, and Jaime was lying beside her, silent and unmoving and yet vividly awake. She was hungry, desperately hungry, for the touch of his hands on her naked skin, and he knew it; he was only waiting for the hunger to build, and as the wind shrieked again, he turned towards her, and breathed out low over her cheek and her ear, “Brienne.”

His voice was warm and richly deep with his own hunger and longing, but there was also beneath it a single faint sour note of triumphant satisfaction, of victory. His hand was sliding into the covers over her belly, and he was nosing delicately at her ear, placing the smallest teasing kisses upon her throat, a cat batting around the prey he thought he’d pinned down, enjoying himself.

It made her furious suddenly. He wanted her, honestly, but he also wanted to stop trying. He’d want to get her with child, he’d try to do it, and when he had, he’d use that, too; he’d tell her that they had to turn back, that it was hopeless for them to try to find so much as a trace of someone that no Wildling hunter or ranger of the Watch had ever been able to track down. And there was enough truth in his protests that she would have to give in, when there was an innocent child of her own to think of, growing beneath her heart. He was still refusing to take the quest as his own, to acknowledge his own deep debts of honor that he didn’t want to pay.

She reached up and caught him by his overgrown hair, long and shaggy now, and jerked him back, opening up room between them as she turned towards him; he stared at her, his eyes wide, and she said in white-hot anger, “Go on and show me the other things, then, if you like, but if you even think of putting your cock in me, I swear to the Mother, I’ll cut it off.”

He flushed crimson along his cheekbones and his mouth was a straight hard line of thwarted anger—but also of unchecked lust; he held there quivering a moment and then dived down towards her belly, tunneling himself down in the bedding and getting her clothes open in the warm cocoon of their blankets. He put his mouth on her, between her legs. She hadn’t taken her hand off his head. She gasped and gripped tight as she jerked up at him a little involuntarily, and he shuddered suddenly, his whole body. He went at her wildly, licking and touching her, and she gasped again and had to fight the urge to press him down harder, against her, and then he—he reached up a hand and pressed it down over hers, a brief, desperate gesture.

She shivered all over, feeling a wave of crimson heat and color washing all the way up through her, and then she deliberately put her other hand on his head too, and forced him down into her eager, rising hips. He moaned against her wordlessly, a sound that traveled through her whole body, and nuzzled into her and thrust his tongue inside her, his thumb rubbing at her until she was clenching and shivering, the climax rolling through her, and even then he kept going until she pulled him off, dragging his head up. He was panting; he kissed her thigh with his face and his beard wet and groaned longingly, “Please, Brienne, please.”

“What did I say?” she said flatly. “You can finish on your own,” and he shuddered against her so violently that she realized he just had, without anything more than her command.

“Oh, gods,” he said faintly afterwards, a whimpering edge in his voice, resting his forehead against her belly, and she sighed luxuriously and even stroked his head a little, as the blaze of fury went gradually cooling to a deep glowing warmth throughout her body, proof against the storm outside.

Chapter Text

Jaime did try again in the morning to convince her to give up, but with a despairing note, knowing that it wasn’t going to work. “There’s a million square miles he could be lost in, and we have no idea where!” he snarled, waving his hand over the map that she’d unrolled again, while they ate their rations huddled in the middle of the tent, the reindeer munching in their nosebags. “We’re not looking for a needle in a haystack, we’re looking for a grain of sand on the western shore! We don’t even know what direction to go from here. Go on, tell me one way, any way, that’s better to try than another!”

Brienne sighed deeply. “Keep following the river.”

“Wonderful, you’ve named the one way that doesn’t make any sense to try,” Jaime said, and she blinked at him. “Stark’s scouts have followed the river! If there were signs to be found, they’d have been found. Anywhere his scouts go doesn’t make sense to follow!” He turned and pawed impatiently through their bags to yank out the other map that Tarly had given them, with the Wildling villages and tribal ranges marked on it. “We should avoid all of these, too!” he said furiously, flinging it down and waving his hand over it. “None of the Wildlings have ever seen this three-eyed raven in their lives. If he was anywhere near one of their villages, anywhere their hunters went, they’d know where Bran Stark was going. He has to have gone somewhere no Wildling ever goes!”

She was staring at him as he finished, and after a moment with his chin outthrust, glaring at her defiantly, he froze, and then jerked his head to look back down at the map: the narrow lines that outlined the tribes, their territories—and in the far northeast, at the edge of Always Winter, one narrow sliver of blank space between mountains, where nothing at all was marked.

#

It took them another three weeks to reach the blank place on the map, and Jaime nearly frothed with rage when they did: two lines of perfectly sheer peaks met in a point, driving away in either direction without a break between them, and no sign of a pass. “So that’s why it isn’t marked,” he said bitterly. “Wonderful. Now what? I presume you’re going to insist that we go back to the last supply depot and think of some other stupid idea to try?”

“No,” Brienne said, with bright sharp certainty. “We’re in the right place.” Jaime stared at her and flung a hand out towards the mountains in pure wordless outrage, but she shook her head fiercely. “You were right, don’t you see? Anywhere the Wildlings know, anywhere they’d have gone, that’s where Bran isn’t. And no Wildling who knows this part of the world would have come here, because they’d know that there’s no way over those mountains. So there is a way. And if we find it, we’ll find him.”

“Oh, you madwoman,” Jaime said. “Why don’t we just stab ourselves instead? It’ll hurt less than falling.”

“We don’t have to scale them!” she said. “If that’s what it took, how could Bran have done it? They couldn’t have pulled him up those cliffs. There must be a pass somewhere.” Jaime groaned and buried his head on the back of the left reindeer in an attitude of despair. It peered around at him with its big eyes and snorted.

But he followed her when she set off towards the very base of the cliffs, searching as they went for some break in the sheer rock, some cave that might tunnel through them. They had to choose which face of the cliffs to follow, east or west, without any sign to guide them. Jaime glared at her savagely when she asked him to make the choice, but when she only waited, expectantly, he looked to either side in annoyance at first, and then his gaze went sharp and intent, and he said, “The eastern cliffs are lower. Water would drain down from them to the Shivering Sea. There’s more chance of a pass on that side.”

She sent away another one of the ravens in the morning, to let the Starks know where they had been looking, in case they too vanished into whatever fate had swallowed up Bran and Jon Snow and their company. She knew that Robb was troubled by the long absence of the army of the dead, and it seemed to her all too likely that perhaps the company had stumbled over the hiding place where they were all sequestered, and had been taken, either as corpses or as prisoners.

“Yes, and here we are, trying to do the same thing,” Jaime said, but he was only grumbling for show by then; he didn’t even take his eyes away from the cliffs. She felt that the hunt had come alive in him at last, and two weeks later, it was he who found them the way.

They were going slowly, traveling only in the scant hours of daylight, so as not to risk missing the path in the dark. They’d spent the night tucked up against the cliffs, hidden behind a packed mound of snow on the outside. It wasn’t only for warmth. That afternoon, they had come across tracks in the snow, recent enough not to have been covered over or blown away: the dragging footsteps of the dead.

There had been scarcely an hour of daylight left. They’d hurried onward as fast as they could go through half the remaining light, brushing the snow behind them, and then stopped and made their shelter with great care. They tunneled into the space between the cliff face and the thick snow and packed it outwards into a curving wall, all but burying themselves between snow and stone. They didn’t take off their armor to sleep, and took turns lying awake, listening; when it was her watch, Brienne found her hand going to her sword over and over, although she could hear nothing, not even the wind, from behind the thick wall of snow. Even the reindeer were silent, huddling in on themselves and pressing in close against them from the outside, as if they too were afraid.

They didn’t go out until the morning light had fully crested over their camp, and even then they emerged cautiously and slowly. There was nothing stirring. Jaime stood watch with drawn sword while Brienne loaded the reindeer and packed up the shelter in haste. Then she paused and looked around at him frowning, her hand going to the hilt of her own blade, but he was only staring intently at the cliff face behind them. She looked at it and saw nothing, but suddenly Jaime burst into movement, almost galloping towards it and shoving through the deep snow, and her heart leapt as he vanished, going around an outcropping of stone that had been standing directly in front of the cliff face, almost impossible to see.

She left the reindeer picketed and went after him; he’d already made it even further out of sight, and she followed the cleft, wide enough for two men to walk abreast, for several more minutes before he came back, his whole face brilliant with a hunter’s taut excitement. “It keeps going,” he said.

They had to take the packs off the reindeer to maneuver them around the outcropping, but after that, they managed to pick their way up the cleft without too much trouble. It was steep in a few places, and they were both sweating, but Brienne realized halfway through the passage that it wasn’t just the labor: the air was warmer up ahead.

They’d barely gone for twenty minutes when from one moment to the next, the passage opened up into a deep sheltered valley, cupping a large pond only lightly frozen over, surrounded by scrub and boulders. At the far end of the pond stood a hill with a great towering weirwood, spreading wide its enormous crown of blood-colored leaves. Its roots spilled down over the edge of the hill, and some of them framed the narrow dark entrance to a cave, with the ruined fragments of a door standing in its mouth.

And up on top of the hill, at the base of the tree, stood two large cairns made of heaped small stones and earth and mostly covered with snow, the size of two graves.

They left the reindeer nudging eagerly at the snow to get to grass beneath, and walked down to an open place at the shore, staring at the hill with its two burial mounds; they stood there a long moment blankly, and then Jaime slowly turned his head and froze. Brienne looked over and had her dragonglass dagger out at once, her hand braced over the other arm. A man was standing not far away from them, partly hidden by one of the tall boulders by the side of the water, unmoving: a Wildling man, his face blank and utterly empty, his eyes milk-white with his skin greyish blue, and in the middle of his chest a dark-stained stab wound gaping through his furs and armor.

But the dead man didn’t come towards them or even look at them. He only went on standing there. Brienne jerked to look the other way: there was another dead man standing not far in the shadow of a few scrubby bushes, his throat gaping to white bone, and beyond him another, and another—twenty men in all, scattered in positions around the water, two of them by the doors of the cave.

Jaime had drawn his sword and the dragonglass dagger he’d been given in Castle Black. But none of the dead men moved. After a little while, Jaime slowly stepped back from the shore, and she backed away with him until they had a little distance, and then they shifted to stand back to back. Still none of the men moved. Jaime began moving cautiously towards the hill. Even as they edged past the dead men, none of them even twitched. They all bore mortal wounds, but their bodies hadn’t rotted almost at all, and they all wore nearly the same garb: Wildling furs and mail and cloaks, bows and blades. They looked like a company, and Brienne thought surely they were one: these were the men who had gone north, at Mance Rayder’s command, to help Bran Stark on his quest.

The dead warriors went on standing silently, unmoving, even as they went past them all and climbed up the hill, to the two great mounds. There were two larger stones at the head of each one, but neither one had been marked with a name. Jaime was looking between them a little helplessly. The whole pocket of the valley seemed a place of utter stillness, of death, and Brienne gasped aloud shocked when suddenly the silence broke, and a man said, “Kingslayer?”

They both whirled around to see a living man staring at them, bewildered, and beside him a young woman, not long out of girlhood, her bow drawn taut, aimed at Jaime’s head. On either side of them crouched two enormous direwolves, one golden-brown and another pure white, red-eyed, with their teeth bared.

“What are you doing here?” the man said, still staring at Jaime.

The girl darted a look at the man. “You know them?”

The man was dark of hair and eye, bearded, in a heavy furred cloak; he was gaunt and weary-looking, but he also looked exactly as Robb had described him: one of the statues in Winterfell, a figure out of the ancient tapestries and paintings of the Stark kings of old. It wasn’t a surprise to hear Jaime say, “Jon Snow,” blankly; then he added, “Looking for you,” in tones almost as bewildered, as if he couldn’t believe they’d succeeded.

Neither of them said another word; they only went on gawking at one another, until finally Brienne cleared her throat and said, “We’re here as friends, at the charge of Lady Catelyn Stark, to bring her son Bran home. Is he here with you? Is he…does he still live?”

The edge of battle was going out of the young woman’s body; she lowered the bow, loosing the tension on the string, but there was no ease in her face; she was unsmiling, and Jon Snow looked equally grim. “Aye,” he said after a moment. “Bran lives. We think.”

“You think?” Jaime said.

They followed them down the hill and into the cave, a strange twisting passage full of thin dangling roots, the walls formed of dark earth gripped between thicker ones, until they came into a small chamber at what felt like the center, a great bramble-like knot of roots. Caught in them, suspended above the floor, was the eyeless corpse of an ancient old man with stringy white hair hanging from his skull, his skin bleached as driftwood and shrunken against his bones, less rotting than withering slowly away.

Opposite him, also tangled up in the roots, was a young dark-haired man who looked very little like the sketches Brienne had carried with her. He was whole, and Brienne thought she saw a hint of breath in him, but his eyes were filmed over a solid milky-white, and he didn’t stir at all when they came into the room. The golden-brown direwolf went up to him and nudged at his hand and whined, but it dangled limply.

Two more of the dead Wildling men stood sentinel near the door, but hidden mostly from sight by the tangled roots. As far from them as possible was a small camp, a comfortless arrangement: two bedrolls open, a few skins for the wolves to sleep upon, and a single cooking pot. Spare rolled-up bedrolls had been used to mark out its boundary. At one side of it, a narrow sleigh had been stood on its end and made into a drying rack; a few dozen fish were hanging upon it. A few rags, a whetstone; three dragonglass blades, chipped in many places, had been laid carefully on a cloth to one side. There was nothing else in the barren chamber.

“What…happened?” Jaime said, staring up at the suspended bodies.

The story was as strange as the place, unreal and bewildering; the ancient old man, a seer, had summoned Bran Stark here through his dreams, to become his heir and his replacement. “But it took a long time to get here,” Jon Snow said. “A longer time still after we arrived.”

He confirmed their stay with the quiet people in their valley: Bran had seen a vision of the wights approaching the undefended caves, and they’d raced to the valley to fight them off. “It took us out of our way, and we had four men wounded, who needed to heal up and rest before they could march again. It was more than a year before we made it here, and found the old man. And then—that was only the start of Bran’s training.”

It had been a slow process.  “He’d be a month or two like this, gone in a single vision,” Jon said, gesturing bleakly up at his brother, gazing into his unseeing eyes. “Whenever he woke up, he’d think it had only been a day. The old raven said he couldn’t go quicker, it was dangerous, but the men were impatient. They were our friends, by then, but they still owed their allegiance to Mance and their own kin, and they said we’d been gone too long. If the Wildlings were to get through the Wall for winter, it had to be soon. And we owed him as well. 

“So I sent two of them back, with a letter from me and Bran to Robb, telling him where we were, and asking him to help the Wildlings in return. Six months later, I sent two more. And every six months after that…we drew lots, to see which two men would try to go next. Because we knew that they hadn’t got through. We had run out of supplies by then, and were having to go further afield for hunting. We were seeing the tracks of the dead in the trees.”

But the raven had told them that his power hid and protected the valley from the dead. Until one morning when Bran had begun shouting, in the midst of a vision. “I was here with them in the cave,” Meera said. “Bran was shouting his brother’s name. Robb, you have to go, they’re coming! That’s what he was saying. And the old raven started saying, no, Bran, stop, you mustn’t. And then—” Her face contorted in remembered misery. “Bran started shuddering on the floor, and his eyes were—they started going black, instead of white, like ink was spreading through them. I was trying to hold him still, and then the old raven’s eyes cleared for a moment, and he told me, If the Night’s King takes the raven, he can bring down the Wall. Hold the door. The dead will be coming. You must hold the door.

“And after that—his eyes went white too, and the tree roots picked Bran up and took him out of my arms. Something started passing between them, something glowing, moving through the roots from the old raven to Bran, and then—as the light came into him, his eyes started turning back white again.”

“But that’s when the dead came,” Jon Snow said, low. “Wights, two hundred of them or more, coming up into the valley.”

“They killed my brother, Jojen,” Meera said, her voice thick with remembered grief. “He was keeping watch at the cleft. He saw them and came running to warn us, but they…they caught him on the way. The other men all panicked and ran away, deep into the caves.”

“They ran?” Brienne said, looking around at the silent, dead men.

“Don’t think harshly of them,” Jon said. “When you see the dead come at you, a horde of them swarming…” He shook his head. “It’s a horror. I don’t blame them for breaking. They’ve paid for it a thousand times over, since. After they ran, I told Hodor to keep the door shut as long as he could, and I held the corridor at the narrowest place. Meera was inside the room with Bran.”

“I told Bran and the raven that we didn’t have much time left,” Meera said. “I could hear Hodor—he was afraid and crying. The dead were starting to break through and claw at him. And then—then Bran and the old raven both started saying, hold the door. Hodor started saying it, too, over and over. He didn’t move. He held the door as long as he could, even while…even while they were…killing him.”

“And before they broke the door down,” Jon said, “the other men had come back. They stood and fought with me, even as the dead came at us. All their eyes had gone white, and…nothing brought them down. They all took killing blows, but they kept fighting. They made a wall before me, and I could strike over their shoulders to strike down the dead with Longclaw.” He put his hand on his blade, the hilt of a snarling wolf’s head. “They kept coming at us, all night, until the morning.”

“When the sun came up, and hit the weirwood—that’s when finally Bran’s eyes went all white again. And all the wights fell apart into dust. But the old raven was dead,” Meera finished softly.

“And every night they come at us again,” Jon said, gesturing to the door, “and we have to hold them off until the next sunrise. If they ever get through, if they make it through and take Bran…” He trailed off and shook his head. “We can’t let it happen,” he finished simply. “We must guard him as long as we can hold out.”

There was a note of hopelessness in his voice, and he and Meera both looked nearly grey with weariness, worn down with the dragging endless labor. Brienne nodded, grimly. “We can spell you, at least, now that we’ve come,” she said, and Jon nodded back in gratitude, and Jaime said, “Oh, the hell we can.”

They turned; he was glaring at her, at all of them, with real fury. “No,” he said to her. “That’s not what we’re doing.” He whirled and went to one of the dead men standing along the wall, a man who bore a great battle-axe, and seized the handle. “Let go, you unburied cunt,” he hissed, and hauled it out of his grasp. He turned back and marched over to Bran Stark, and pointed up at him. “Catelyn Stark didn’t send me here to guard her son from endless hordes of dead men until the end of days. She sent me to bring him home, alive or dead. So that’s what I’m going to do. We have until nightfall? We’re getting him down from there, and we’re putting him on the sleigh, and we’re running like hell.”

Jon Snow glared at him. “Oh, aye, because I thought we’d just stay here until they took us,” he said savagely. “We can’t make it. Eight good men tried, Wildlings, men who know this country, without any great burden.” He gestured to the sleigh. “Even with reindeer pulling the sleigh, even if we cut our rations to the bone and went back by the straightest course, we won’t make it. The dead don’t need to eat or sleep. If they didn’t take us the very first night, they’d catch us the first time we had to stop to hunt.”

“But we won’t need to stop,” Brienne said, slowly. “There are supply caches placed all the way up the Bitter. We only need to make it back there. It’s three weeks from here, going straight. We have enough in our packs right now. We can just put him on the sleigh and go.”

“Supply caches?” Jon said, incredulous. “Who’d be putting supply caches in the far north in the middle of winter?”

“Your brother, that’s who,” Jaime said.

“My brother—Robb?” Jon said, his voice rising. “He did come back to the North, then, the way Bran said he would? And he’s been—but—why? Why would he—” 

“Actually, it’s Princess Sansa who’s been doing it,” Brienne said tartly. “But the caches are there for the sake of your brother’s scouts and his army, so they can march even this far without carrying heavy supply. As soon as we get to the Bitter, if we go at a forced march, we’ll be reaching a new supply depot every week. And we have ravens with us,” she added. “We’ll send them on ahead; help may well come to meet us on the way.”

Jon and Meera were staring at her blankly as she spoke, as if they were almost more bewildered than glad to see an escape opened up for them, so ground down by all the dreadful years of hopeless and endless work, with no way out that they could have imagined.

Jaime didn’t wait for them to come out of it; he turned and swung the axe at the tree roots holding Bran suspended in the air. Even as Jon lurched forward with a raised hand, the first root stumps came down with a thick, viscous red liquid seeping from the ends, and others began to thrash and writhe. “Oh, that’s charming!” Jaime said, waving his arm at them wildly. “Yes, let’s leave him trapped inside this thing!” and Jon halted staring at them in horror.

Jaime went on swinging furiously. When some of the root tendrils reached down and tried to grope at his arms, he backed a few paces and wiped his brow off on his arm and roared up at the tree itself, “Keep trying to stop me and I’ll go up there and chop you down, I swear it!” and went back to hacking Bran out.

Both Jon and Meera seemed caught wavering between fear and longing. “Jon—!” Meera said, still half a protest, looking from Jaime to him.

But Jon was working his way through his own confusion; he was already shaking his head, and he turned back to her and took her shoulders. “No, they’re right. Of course they’re right. We can’t hold here forever. We’re growing tired, making mistakes. One day soon, they’ll have us. We’ve looked for this chance for so long. We have to try to get Bran out at once. We’ll leave the other men here behind us, to hold the passage. With any luck, we could get a few days on before the Night’s King even knows we’re gone.”

Fire was kindling back into his face even as he spoke, energy restored, and he went straight to the old sleigh, tearing off the few skimpy fish hung upon it and casting them aside so he could right it, and while Meera took up a knife and joined Jaime in chopping Bran out of the nest of roots, Brienne helped Jon carry the sleigh outside.

Together they worked out how to rig the reindeer to it, and divided up their packs into four, with a lighter one for Meera. Then Brienne took pen and paper, and wrote three copies of a message, short: Found Bran and Jon. The dead follow us. Beneath it she drew a quick sketch to show their position, and where they would go, running as fast as they could for the safety of the Wall, and the supply depots they would aim for along the route.

She tied them to the legs of her last three ravens, fed them and gave them water, and set the birds free to fly. Even as they were winging away, Jaime was carrying Bran out to them, hanging limply in his arms, thin trickles of blood running in a maze over his arms and a few root tendrils still clinging. Meera had brought the bedrolls and some furs. They put him onto the sleigh and covered him well, put their waterbags underneath to keep warm with him, and slung the packs onto their shoulders. The dead Wildlings all marched straight back inside the cavern when Snow told them to guard it. The ones in the front rank stood looking out of the tunnel entrance with their blank faces and their weapons ready, watching unmoved as they drove the sleigh over to the passage, and left them all behind.

In a few places in the cleft, and at the outcropping, she and Jaime had to lift the sleigh up entirely to clear a sharper turn, but they were out again before the sun had reached its midday height, and flying south with a cold wind at their backs. The reindeer set their pace, trotting and walking quick, their ears flicking back and forth uneasily with the direwolves at their flanks. They made good time; Brienne had given Jon and Meera squares of preserved fruit and fat from their own stores already, which they’d devoured hungrily along with the best of their own carefully-rationed provisions, and their strength was up. They all took turns driving the sleigh, to have a rest themselves until they began to get chilled; whenever they reached good, hard-packed ground, they ran for a little, to warm their blood, and made the reindeer run as well, where the sleigh could go sailing fast behind them.

They didn’t stop for the night. Jon and Meera were tense as the dark fell, looking behind them often with their hands on their weapons. Bran moaned faintly a few times during the night, murmuring in gibberish; once he said, clearly, “Hold the door,” and subsided again. They slept for a few hours in the morning, and then they started going again.

Three days later, halfway through the night, they reached the narrow, nameless stream that Jaime and Brienne had followed to get to the cliffs: they would follow it back south now, a good surface for the sleigh to run on. They slept for a little then, but just before dawn, Bran tossed and groaned and babbled again, and then he jolted straight up and said loudly, in a dreadful hollow voice that echoed like thunder, his eyes still milk white, “The Night’s King knows,” before he collapsed limply back again.

They’d all jerked out of their bedrolls and were on their feet, weapons drawn, panting. After a moment, Jon said, “We have to go quicker.”

“We should take turns on the sleigh,” Meera said abruptly. “One of us could sleep on it, under the covers with Bran. Then we won’t get chilled, and we won’t need as much rest.”

It was a clever thought; it let them keep going onward almost without a pause, only slowing from time to time to let the reindeer plod on drowsily, asleep on the hoof. They stopped only for a few hours in the sunlight, morning and afternoon. It was wearing them all down quickly, especially the reindeer, but there wasn’t a choice. The stream took them all the way to the Bitter, and where the two joined, there was a slope up into the foothills of the Frostfangs; during their morning pause, Jaime went up and stood looking back, his eyes shaded against the glare, and when he came back down, his face was a grim mask; he said only, “They’re coming.”

They made good time on the broader river, swept almost clean of snow by the wind that was at their backs; their sleigh went gliding over the ice smoothly, and the reindeer trotted as if it was weightless. But three weeks later, Brienne woke in the morning and could see the army of the dead for the trouble of looking back along the river, the front line of them a dark blot on the horizon: made motionless by the sun but waiting, in perfect stillness, for the night to fall.

They opened up a little more distance by going straight through the day, only letting the reindeer sleep half an hour at a time, and trying to feed them more to make up for it: they’d reached the first supply depot the day before, and spared half an hour to dig out some more grain and food. But Jaime rubbed their legs and felt their heads and chests and shook his head. “They don’t have much more than a week left in them,” he said.

“We could turn up into the mountains and try to find someplace to hide,” Meera said.

“Against those numbers?” Jaime said. “They’ll ferret us out of any hole we find.”

“The Fist of the First Men,” Brienne said, digging out the maps. “Sam Tarly said that the Night’s Watch had fortified and manned it again. We can make that in a week. They’ll have ravens to send; we might be able to hold until help reaches us.”

They didn’t have any better ideas, so they started running for it. Jaime drove the reindeer up to the limit, coaxing every last scrap of speed out of them; whenever they paused, he fed them by hand, warming the grain with his own body to make it easier for them to eat, and gave them water from their waterbags instead of letting them lick the snow. But they were failing, and the dead were drawing closer, their own pace picking up as the ones who drove them saw the prey in sight.

The Fist reared up on the horizon the next day, its strange shape distinct, the clenched lump of the peak perched upon a narrower base of stone that had been eaten away by a thin tributary of the river. The sight gave them the first glimmer of hope: there were lights shining atop the hill, illuminating the top of a wall in good repair. But they already knew they would have a desperate run all the way to the end, a matter of yards if not inches, and then who knew how long the defenses would even be able to hold against a full onslaught of the dead. They stayed on the river as long as they could, and only then turned off into the forest towards the fort, driving through the trees with Jon in the lead, breaking the snow for the reindeer and showing them the way. “The only way up is the eastern slope,” he’d told them; he led them towards the track he remembered, only to stop in horror when he found it blocked with two massive fallen trees: they could have scrambled over it, but they couldn’t have taken the sleigh.

“Back to the gully?” Jaime said grimly: there was a narrower canyon that would lead them to the track the longer way around the fort; they’d passed it half a mile back, half a mile they couldn’t spare.

“Or there! That ridge up ahead!” Meera said: the top of it ran to the other side of the hill. She ran ahead, quicker than the rest of them without mail; but she hadn’t even reached it before she turned around again and came running back, waving them back in despair. “It’s blocked!” she said. “The slope is full of scree. We’ll never get the sleigh up it.”

Without another word, Jon seized the reins at the heads of the deer and helped Jaime turn the sleigh around; then they were all running back for the gully, and in the distance they could see the dead coming: a dreadful moment, having to face that onrushing wave of horror and keep going towards it. They turned aside into the gully bare minutes before the front ranks reached them. Jaime was whipping the deer onward, the wolves snapping at their heels to drive them; Brienne was running at the rear of the sleigh with Jon and Meera at her sides, getting ready to stop and fight, if they came to any narrow place, where perhaps a minute or two of grace could be won for Jaime to get Bran to safety; there would be no hope of more than that, in the face of that swollen horde.

“What’s that smell?” Meera gasped out. There was a strange thick acrid bitterness in the air, and underneath their feet, the snow of the gully was stained pale green all over with spatters, as if something had been poured over it from above, and here and there it was pockmarked with holes whose edges were sooty black against the snow.

A slow confusion stirring in her, Brienne spared one glance back over her shoulder, even as she was running. The dead were beginning to come pouring into the gully behind them, the terrible ant-swarm that Hretha had told them about from the Milkwater, filling the whole canyon as they came onward. With a sudden flash of understanding, Brienne said, “Quick! Quick, keep going! No, don’t stop!” she added, even as they approached a narrowing place in the gully, and she saw Jon slowing, getting ready to stop and try to hold off the pursuit a little longer, just as she had meant to do. “Run!”

Jon stared at her bewildered, but she waved him on, and he trusted her and kept going; they raced through the narrow place and onward, starting to climb the eastern slope up towards the fortress, its gates standing wide open like a target, and then suddenly Jaime had to pull up the reindeer, staring around himself wildly; Stark men were bursting out of the brush and surrounding them. Two were heaving the covers off the sleigh and throwing them aside; a big man lifted Bran off it bodily, and others were grabbing onto the rest of them. “Forgive, m’lady!” a man was saying to her, urgently. Brienne didn’t resist as she was pulled off her feet; another man was yanking at her boots, her green-stained boots, dragging them off her feet and flinging them back into the gully and following them with his own gloves. Someone was even cutting the reindeer from their lines, and leading the poor sagging beasts away.

A line of archers had run across the path at their heels and were shooting the onrushing front ranks of the dead at a frantic pace. Their arrows had dragonglass clamped between thin sharp layers of steel that exposed the polished black stone only at the very point and along the two edges; each one plunged deep and felled the dead at once, piling up a heap of corpses in the way of the rest. 

“This way, quick!” one of the men was urging. “Hurry!” and Brienne grabbed Jaime by the shoulder and pushed him onward; he was still gawking helplessly all around, and he gave her a wild look and then followed her up the slope, Jon and Meera at their side, all of them barefoot in the snow. After giving them a little lead, the archers behind them turned and ran as well, and they were all helped over the first ring of fortifications, a low stone wall. A man on the other side was already waving a red flag wildly back and forth, a signal, and at their backs a sudden thunder of noise went up, a great chorus of deep voices crying out, “The King in the North!”

They all turned to stare, and Jaime snarled, “Oh, that bastard,” a sound of agony in his voice, as a great wave of men, lancers on horseback with spears tipped in dragonglass, came crashing out of the dark forest at the far end of the gully, the banners with the silver-crowned direwolf streaming. They smashed into the rear of the army of the dead, driving them forward. And on both sides of the gully, filled with the dead, men ran up with blazing torches and flung them down, and the coals and the wildfire that had been poured all along its length erupted with a great roaring of green flames.

#

The hall was glowing warm and soaked in the eerie greenish light shining up from the burning canyon below. Despite the fighting still going on below, the five of them had been taken into the small fortress, to strip and bathe against the chance of a drop of wildfire soaked into their clothes or their hair. Even the wolves had been bathed, much to their disapproval, by handlers in heavy mail and leather gloves. It was strange to hear the battle going, and not be in it, but Brienne didn’t try to argue when the serving-men attending to them gently refused to let them go back out. They’d all gone without sleep and food for too long to be any real use. If the dead managed to break free, it wouldn’t be for lack of three swords and one bow.

In any case, the real fighting was at the far end of the gully, now. The biting northern wind was carrying the smoke away, into the trees to the south, so they could see the battle from the narrow windows of the fort. The cavalry charge had driven most of the horde into the flames, but there were so many of the dead that there was still a great struggle to contain the rest, and keep forcing them to their doom. A bristling ring of spearmen with great shields spiked with dragonglass had come running hard on the heels of the cavalry, to keep them enclosed.

“That line won’t hold!” Jaime said, furiously. “It’s not deep enough, there’s too many of them—” and then he stopped. Down the very streambed they’d traveled, a double file of siege engines was coming into view, being hauled over the ice by heavy draft horses: many of the great polybolos that Robb had commanded built for the Wall. The enormous weapons swiftly began to hurl blazing projectiles and sprays of dragonglass shards into the mass of the army of the dead, just a short distance past the encircling line, enabling the spearmen to press them further in towards the flames. 

In answer, as the mass of the horde thinned, a dreadful line of pale-skinned apparitions formed up: a dozen White Walkers, and in the center a single one of them came forward, wearing a crown of ice that shone with a ghastly corpse-blue light. He spread out both his hands, turned upwards, and from all around him all the fallen dead who hadn’t burned stirred and rose again.

Jon caught his breath in horror. “That’s him—the Night’s King,” he said, and he was ready to turn for his sword after all, the Valyrian steel blade, but before he could, there was a deep grating twanging noise from the smoke on the southern side of the gully, as what must have been at least ten ballistas hidden there suddenly fired all together, launching a flight of barbed harpoons such as Brienne had seen used for whale hunting, with long chains unraveling behind them, and three of them struck the Night’s King together.

Four of the other White Walkers were struck as well, and were felled at once, but even with the long shafts jutting from his body, one of them all the way through him, the Night’s King kept standing. He reached up to grasp the first of the harpoon shafts and tore it from his body. But even as he pulled it out, another two struck into him; he staggered, and then in a sudden jerking rush he did go down, as if he’d been dragged off his feet.

Brienne had to shield her eyes against the blaze to pick out the huge lumbering shapes at the other end of the taut chains: teams of shaggy mammoths, with giants leading them. The chains were rigged around huge trees, serving as pulleys, and with a lumbering effort, they were hauling the Night’s King towards the flames. And as they did, a large sledge came out of the trees with ten barrels tied down on it securely; the men there carefully heaved them one after another right at him, and as they struck, they erupted with towering pillars of green fire.

Jaime flinched a step back from the windows as they went up, but Jon let out a gasping almost like a laugh, a sound full of shattering relief: the lifting not only of physical weight but of work, of dread and responsibility. He turned away from the battlefield and went to let himself sink heavily into a chair by the hearth and cover his face. After a moment, Meera went to join him. Bran had already been lain peacefully on a cot beside the hearth, covered with furs, and the wolves were curled asleep on the stones.

Brienne watched a little longer, to become even more certain that the battle was won. More archers had come out of the trees as well, flights of dragonglass arrows hailing steadily into the ranks of the dead, and with a great blowing of horns, a great mass of Wildling warriors were pouring out of the trees to the north to smash into the flank of the horde, with axes and knives and short swords of dragonglass. The army of the dead was shrinking back into the gully, and the ranks of the spearmen were rotating the front man back at a regular pace that showed they weren’t too hard-pressed. Then she too went gladly to sit down, with a sighing, but Jaime went on staring down at the blaze with his fists clenched by his sides and his mouth downturned in something like rage—and yet there were tear-tracks drawn down his face, catching reflections from the green fire.

He was still standing there when the doors to the hall were opened and Robb came striding in, big in his armor and his furred cloak, with Grey Wind loping by his side; his face was streaked with soot and his eyes were reddened by smoke, but brilliant with victory. He didn’t even slow his stride an instant as he came on, and Jon struggled up out of his chair just in time to be wrapped in his arms; they were clinging to one another, and Robb was pressing Jon’s head close, his own eyes shut; after he at last let him go, he still held Jon’s shoulders gripped tight, tears running freely down his face. “About time you turned up, Snow,” he said, waveringly.

Jon gave a choked watery gasp. “Might say the same to you, Stark,” he managed, and they fell back into each other’s arms again for another long, shuddering moment. They both had to wipe their faces before Jon turned, shaky, and gestured wordlessly to Bran, lying still and silent in the cot; Robb knelt down beside it, his face falling to sorrow, and cupped Bran’s cheek a moment.

“I hardly know him,” he said, low, studying him, and then he turned a smile up at Jon. “He’s got the Stark nose, though, hasn’t he. Father always kept warning that it was sure to turn up in one of us.” Jon swallowed and nodded a little, though a flash of misery still crossed his face. Robb stood up again and embraced him once more. “He’s safe, now,” he said softly. “You’ve kept him safe.”

Brienne had a thickness in her throat, seeing them, even before Robb turned to her; he didn’t even speak, only took her by the shoulders, his eyes saying all she needed to hear. Jon presented Meera, then, and Robb took her hand in both of his and kissed it, more formally, and said, “Lady Reed, my father said of yours that he knew no more steadfast man in all the world; I see the same holds true of his heirs. Your brother?” Meera blinked away tears of her own and shook her head; Robb nodded. “House Stark grieves him with you, and thanks you. There’s no price to be put on what you’ve done for us, but whatever we can do to reward you and yours shall be done.”

Then he turned again: Jaime was still standing rigidly by the window. His chin lifted a little in a struggling gesture of pride, although Brienne saw his throat working with a swallow as Robb came towards him and looked him in the face. Then Robb said, “All right, Lannister, tell the truth. She had to drag you the whole way with the bit in your teeth, didn’t she?” Jaime’s eyes widened in outrage, his thin cheeks flushing, and then Robb caught him by the head with both hands and shook it back and forth a little and then pulled him in and kissed him on the cheek and embraced him, too.

Jaime shuddered all over in his arms, and when Robb let him go, Jaime stood back trembling for one more moment, and then his face contorted suddenly, a wrenched expression, and he slowly knelt before him, bowing his head, a knight bending the knee to his king, and said hoarsely, “Your Grace.”

#

After they’d eaten, Brienne went to the window to look down again, and saw that the horde was all gone into the fires, now. Even so a great wall of men still stood on alert at the far end, bristling with dragonglass spears and holding shields spiked with foot-long shards of dragonglass mounted in steel frames. More men were walking all along the perimeter, and a procession of smaller sleighs drawn by reindeer were coming in a steady flowing stream to throw in more fuel for the fire: cartloads full of coal, to be dumped in one shovelful at a time, carefully, to keep the fires stoked hot; bundles of branches; mammoths dragging entire felled trees. The whole gully was a blazing furnace, a crack opened up into the heart of the earth to swallow the dead back down into it.

But Jon Snow’s face was still drawn with worry, even looking down into it. “I want it to be enough,” he said to his brother, low. “But…he’s not a thing of the mortal world. Do you think he can be killed, just with weapons and fire?”

“I think I’ll give it as good a go as I can,” Robb said, dry.

Then they both whirled, their faces shocked, as a voice behind them said, “Yes,” and Meera gasped; Brienne turned as well, to see Bran Stark still lying on the cot, looking over at them, his eyes no longer filmed over white. “Yes,” he said again. “It was enough. He’s gone.”

They all stood staring at him. There wasn’t the slightest hint of triumph or satisfaction in his voice; he might have told them, with the same tone, that the water jug was empty, or it had stopped raining. Jon and Robb both lurched forward, but before they had gotten close enough to take Bran in their arms, they had stopped again, at the side of the cot, hesitating.

After a moment, Bran pushed himself up with his arms; he calmly accepted their help to move him to a chair, and sat there gazing at all of them with his face strangely blank, a serenity like a deep pool not of water but of—oil, perhaps: something thick and viscous, which would swallow up without a trace anything that fell into it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, in the valley,” he said to Jon, but only making a polite courtesy. “I couldn’t stop holding him off. He could have taken the power, if I had.”

Jon said, “Bran, are you—all right?”

Bran blinked at him a little, and then said, in a faintly apologetic tone, “I’m sorry. I’m not really him. I’m the three-eyed raven, now. Bran’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

Robb and Jon and Meera were all looking down at him in dismay and confusion. “What happened to you, to—him,” Robb said, looking to Jon in worry.

“Bran was trying to help you,” Bran answered, as if he was speaking of another person. “At the Milkwater. That’s why the Night’s King attacked you there. He wanted to lure Bran out. It worked. The other me warned him not to look anywhere north of the Wall, but Bran didn’t listen. He saw the dead attacking you, so he tried to stop the Night’s King. He put his hands on him. But the Night’s King was too strong. He almost took Bran instead. The other me tried to help, but he was already dying. The only thing he could do was give him all of the raven’s power at once. And Bran wasn’t ready yet. He saw too many things, too quickly.”

Bran cocked his head, a tiny frown of thought on his face as he chose his words. “It was like a great storm, sweeping him up and carrying him away,” he went on. “Bran was blown off course, and he couldn’t find his way back. So it was only me left, and the Night’s King still had a grip on us. The power let me hold him off, but he knew where we were. So he came back north to the weirwood valley. If he killed me, he could have taken the power. I had to keep him off, and hold onto the other men. That’s all I could do.”

He finished simply. The dreadful strangeness of the story was made worse because he told it so prosaically, a mere recitation of events which didn’t seem to matter to him very much.

“But now he’s dead,” Meera said. “Why is Bran still lost? How can we bring him back?”

Bran only shrugged in answer. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” she said, in a flaring of anger. “You’re in his body! How dare you take it, how dare you steal it! How do we know you didn’t do this on purpose?”

“You don’t,” Bran said, grotesquely calm, and they all stared at him. “I didn’t,” he added. “If he hadn’t gone to the Night’s King, it wouldn’t have happened. The power was meant to go to Bran little by little. He would have learned how to remember himself while he remembered everything else. But I could be lying. Or I could just have guessed that Bran would go after I warned him. There’s no way for you to know. If I had wanted to steal his body, I could have. I just didn’t want to.”

“Really? Why wouldn’t you?” Jaime said, a sharp challenge. “You were a wizened old man trapped inside a tree in the frozen wastes. Why wouldn’t you want the body of a young man of royal blood, even crippled?”

It was, dreadfully, a good question. But Bran looked up at him, clear and untroubled. “I’m the three-eyed raven. My body doesn’t matter. It could be in the tree, or in this chair, or on a throne. I can go to any time and place that anyone has ever been. I can see what they saw, feel what they felt. I can be with you if I want. The best and the worst things you’ve ever done. I can be with you in the throne room, with the king saying burn them all. I can be with you in the tower, the day Bran found you and Cersei up there. The things I do for love, you said,” going on easily even as Jaime lurched back from him, his face gone white. “That’s why he came to me. He couldn’t walk anymore, so he wanted to fly.”

Jaime was fixed on him with horror; Brienne shared it, looking down at the perfectly clear eyes gazing back up, inhuman and empty of all feeling. Meera gave a short choked sob. But Robb, grim-faced, put out his arms and gathered them away from Bran, who only turned back placidly to stare into the fire, as if he didn’t notice the pain he’d given, unstirred himself.

Robb said quietly, “I’ve had ten years to lose hope; I won’t give it up now, when you’ve brought so much of it back. Whatever’s happened to him, you’ve kept him alive, and brought him this far. We’ll take him home to Winterfell, and there we’ll see what we can do to bring Bran the rest of the way back to us. Wherever he has flown.”

He insisted on having them housed in the small private chambers upstairs, and bedded down with his guard in the hall himself. Brienne felt strangely weightless, going upstairs without armor or pack or even cloak; the heat of the burning gully had warmed the stones on the front side of the keep so much that they would even have to sleep at the opposite side of the rooms, to avoid roasting.

She went into her chamber and sat down on the cot with a deep sighing breath, and thought of sleep, but before she could lie down, there was a knock, and Jaime opened the door. He didn’t look as though he felt the lifting of the burden himself. They’d all grown thin over the long flight southwards, but his face was drawn with tension more than hunger, the skin taut over the bones. Brienne stood up. He came into the room and stood a moment, then jerkily went over to the empty hearth, to stare into a fire that wasn’t lit, and without looking around said abruptly, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she said.

He grimaced. “Yes, there’s a great deal to choose from, isn’t there,” he said, with false lightness, and then he let it drop again. “He was ten years old. I could…I could feel his heart under my hand. Beating like birds.” He said it almost in a whisper. “Cersei and I knew it was stupid. An enemy keep in the middle of the North, someone who would hand us over to Robert without a second thought? But he’d been fornicating with the serving wenches in front of her face. He’d insulted her pride, our pride. That’s why. That’s why we were in that tower, and that’s why I had to—”

He stopped. He didn’t finish the lie, I had to; he stood in silence, his head bowed, as if he really did feel it now as his own cowardice; as if it had finally been proven to him beyond any hope of doubt that there were men of honor in the world, who wouldn’t have done it, no matter the price to be paid. That others would instead have freely offered their lives in a hopeless defense of that little boy he’d tried to murder, as Jon Snow and Meera had done—not to mention the courage of that little boy himself, who’d all but crawled to a terrible destiny for the sake of the world. That there were lords and even kings who were worthy of respect and service, who would labor for years to build their strength, to build a vast and invincible army—not to come ravening southwards in a vicious hunger for more lands and more power, but to defend their people and even the world against a dreadful and monstrous foe.

After a moment he said harshly, “Something better than my house and my cock, you said, and—I don’t know what else I have to offer you. My honor’s a tattered rag, and the only patches are the ones you’ve sewn on yourself. You’ve helped me pay my own debts, over and over, while I behaved as though I was doing you a favor. Grudgingly, at that. You don’t owe me anything, much less your hand.”

Her throat was tight, listening to him. “No, I don’t,” she said quietly. “You could only have it in exchange for yours, honestly given.” He straightened and then slowly turned to look at her, and she knew that he was on the knife’s edge himself, caught between longing and fear. “I was glad to help. And I’d be glad to be your wife. But that’s all that I can offer you. You can’t have me, and also—that life. I’ll never pretend there isn’t work to do, or that it doesn’t matter, or I can’t do it. When there is, I’ll go and do it, and if you won’t help me, then we’re not married, no matter if we’ve made vows or not. It would just be another lie.”

His mouth worked. “I don’t know if I can make that promise, honestly,” he said, a sarcastic edge in his voice that didn’t mask the misery. “Do I have the right to make it? Do you have the right to believe it? Anyone would call you a fool.”

“I’ve been called worse; I can stand it,” Brienne said. “But I can’t decide for you, only for myself. It’s a hard choice. I don’t pretend it isn’t.”

“Do you really think so?” he said sourly. “A hard choice? Is that what you find it?”

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, with a bright flaring of temper again, and he jerked back a little to stare at her round-eyed. “Yes. Yes, Jaime Lannister, I find it a hard choice, and so does every other person in the world, every single time they have to choose between what’s right and pleasing themselves. It’s not harder for you than it is for everyone else! And other people make up their minds to do it, and when they fail, they pick themselves up and try to make amends, and then they go on trying, and if that’s too much to ask of you, then say so, and stop wasting my time!”

“Fine!” he snarled back at her. “If you’re stupid enough to take my word for it, then yes, go ahead and marry me!”

“I will!” she snapped back, and they stood glaring at each other a moment, and then his face went stricken at her as if he hardly believed it. She laughed suddenly, a helpless snorting burst, half-disbelieving herself, and then he caught her face and was kissing her wildly, and she dragged him down to the cot with her, so glad that for once they weren’t wearing any armor.

Chapter Text

The smells up ahead were as right as a full belly, bright with bare earth and stone and metal, bitter with smoke, rich with roasted meat: familiar, and strong with the smell of pack. Summer was tired, for it had been a long way, but he lifted his head and called, low and long, asking for a reply, and voices answered him, not just the ones close by but three more from inside the walls, and out of the opening gates they came running; they nosed and yipped and jumped in greeting. They ran together the rest of the way, all together, not just one and another but pack, through the gates and up to a good den, warm and snug, with clean water and fresh meat.

Summer ate with his pack and slept with his pack, curled together on the warm stones, quiet inside and out. He flicked an ear but didn’t worry when the steps came in; they were also pack, and he only made a drowsy yip when a hand paused above his head, asking, and then came down to scratch behind his ears, and rub his neck and back. He didn’t pay much attention to the voices, except when Robb said his name. “It must be Summer, I think, if anything’s to do it. Can you think of a way to—ask his help, Rickon?” and he lifted his head a moment to listen, before he put it back down to drowse again as the voices just went on.

But a few days later, as he slept again by the hearth, Rickon’s hand came on his head, stroking, and said, “Summer, come,” and he yawned and got up and stretched and then followed him to the familiar room that had belonged to Bran. But Bran wasn’t there. There was a shape like Bran sitting by the fire in a chair, but he didn’t smell right, and when Summer nosed at his hand, Bran didn’t stroke his head; he only looked down at Summer, and then back up at Rickon.

Then Rickon put his hand on Summer’s jaw and turned his head to look into his eyes. He wanted to come inside, into the deep den. Summer laid his ears back and showed his teeth. But Rickon didn’t push. He only stayed there, asking, and Summer had only ever let Bran in there, but after a moment he let Rickon come in, and then Rickon made him understand: he wanted him and Bran to come out and run.

Summer wagged his tail. He wanted to run, too. Rickon got up and went out of the room, and Summer followed him. The rest of the pack was coming to join them, ears pricked, ready; they had eaten and they had slept and they had rested; they all wanted to run. Rickon led them out through the walled wood and over the wall, and there they started running, deep and joyful through the forest, the forest that was theirs. They had to go slow at first; some of them were running clumsy and apart, but one after another they came out of their deep dens and joined the pack, until all of them were running as one. But Bran wasn’t there. They wanted Bran with them.

Summer had never had to bring Bran running; Bran had always come himself. But he knew how to find Bran’s deep den. Bran came from there, when they ran together. Summer hadn’t tried to go the other way before. Bran would come when he wanted to come. But it wasn’t hard to do; it was only like whining at Bran’s door, to tell him it was time to go outside, and to bark, when Bran didn’t answer; and when he still didn’t, Summer pushed his way inside the den, and Bran wasn’t in it. There was another way going out of it, a long strange way, and Bran was out there wandering.

Summer was uneasy about it, but the rest of his pack was with him, strong and comforting, so he went out that way a little cautiously, sniffing out Bran’s trail, and with the pack behind him, he started following it, running faster and faster, trying to catch him, but Bran wasn’t running ahead, he was—a shadow skimming over the ground, cast by a bird flying high above, and they were running beneath him.

They had to give up after a while, and let him keep on flying alone; they had run and run, and it was time to go back to their den. Summer stopped and howled, lonely, after Bran’s vanishing shadow, before he turned around and loped home with the pack, and Rickon fed him a whole bowl of fresh chicken hearts by the fire, and let him know that he had done very well.

“That was Bran, wasn’t it?” Jon was saying, stroking his head. “That bird, up overhead… I couldn’t tell if it was real or only dreaming.”

“Dreaming’s real too,” Rickon said. “Yes. That was Bran. Summer was following him.”

“But how are wolves to catch a bird?” Robb said.

The next time they went running, it was easier to follow Bran’s trail again. But he was still out of reach, flying too far overhead; it was like being a pup again, trying to jump at the moon. But abruptly Menace turned aside and took them hunting instead: she had caught another scent. They ran after her and brought the prey down: a great deer with enormous antlers, and they ripped open its belly and dived into the hot fresh meat, the spilling blood. Grey Wind took the entrails in his teeth and pulled them out long, and Bran’s shadow fell over the clearing, circling, until he landed on a perch, his head cocked.

Summer gathered himself, waiting, waiting, and when Bran came down to peck at the long steaming entrails, Summer leaped, and caught him by one of his wings even as he tried to go back up. He was a screeching flapping mouthful of feathers, and when Summer didn’t let go, he turned to look at Summer with his three eyes, black and sharp, trying to push into him. But he didn’t need to push; he was welcome, and when Summer let him into the deep den, he recognized where he was, and his struggle quieted.

Summer let him go, and Bran hopped to a branch, but he didn’t fly away. He cocked his head and looked down at them all. And in a moment he came back down to the feasting, his wings smoothed. Summer joyfully seized one of the haunches of the deer and cracked the bone with his jaws, getting the hot rich taste of marrow into his mouth, fresh and good; they would eat together, and then they would run together; Bran would fly and Summer would run, run and run and run.

#

Jon was still half lost in the wildness of running with the wolves as they all came tumbling back into the godswood, with the sun rising: Sansa sliding down from her sweating horse with pine needles and dried leaves tangled in her hair; Rickon lying on his back in the snow next to Shaggy with his eyes closed, panting; Robb standing with a hand on Grey Wind and his head flung back, breathing in deep draughts of air. Arya appeared out of the shadows a moment later with Nymeria on her heels, the two of them more collected. It hadn’t seemed like very long while they were out together, but his whole body was heavy with fatigue, and his mouth was full of the taste of blood and raw meat, and there was dried blood under his fingernails, chasing a dream of Bran.

Jon had hardly dared to believe that it could do any good. But when they came out into the courtyard, Lady Catelyn was waiting for them all, with tears of relief in her eyes. “Bran is sleeping,” she said to Robb, her voice trembling through her smile. “After you had been gone perhaps half the night, he stirred in his bed, and then his eyes—his eyes went white, the way you described. We didn’t try to speak to him. And then, only a little while ago—he closed them again, and began to breathe more deeply. Maester Wornos thinks we ought not try to wake him yet, but he hopes that he is—returned to his body.”

Rickon reached out and put a hand on Summer’s head, stroking him. “Good job, Summer,” he said to the wolf. “Go to Bran.” Summer whuffed back, and went trotting into the keep at once; Lady Catelyn went after him.

After their baths, Jon went up with Robb to look in on Bran. Jon was glad to have Robb’s company, a shield before him: Lady Catelyn was sitting beside the bed again in her vigil, with sewing in her hands. On the wall over Bran’s head she’d hung a great wreath of woven sticks, with seven small figures like dolls bound upon it. She looked up and followed his eyes to it, and then she dropped her gaze to her lap, and her lips tightened over what she might have said, if they’d been alone together.

Summer was stretched in the bed alongside Bran, drowsing and peaceful; but when they came in he lifted his head and wagged his tail before putting his head back down. Bran’s eyes were still closed, but Jon saw at once what Maester Wornos had meant: he was there. He wasn’t just lying there too-peaceful and too-straight, like a corpse that hadn’t stopped breathing. Instead his head had tipped to one side, and his chest rose and fell with his breath, and he had a hand in Summer’s fur: a natural sleep, it seemed, and Jon exchanged a look of hope with Robb before they gently stepped away again.

Jon went back to his chambers after—his new chambers, two large rooms together in the north tower, with rugs on the floor and wall hangings, a big heavy bed and chairs by the fire; he hardly knew what to do with himself in so much space. But Robb had insisted upon it, and Jon didn’t know what to do with himself anyway, so it made little enough difference.

The running had only made him feel it more strongly. Out with the wolves, when he’d finally fallen out of himself and into the pack with Ghost, everything had been so easy, so clear. He’d wanted only to be running, flying through the forest with his pack, and he’d had that, so everything had been perfect. But now he was out again, and everything was back to being wrong. He was wrong: some part of him left behind there underground, in the valley of the three-eyed raven, still trapped inside the endless circle of the days and nights. There hadn’t been anything else to do but stay and fight as long as he could, so he’d stopped wanting anything else, and now—he wasn’t sure he remembered how.

On the way home, Robb had told him, gently, the truth about his mother; about his mother and his father both. Jon hadn’t doubted the story for a moment; he felt the truth of it, how it explained so much that he’d never understood, of how Father had acted. But he couldn’t make it mean anything now, to his life. What was he to do with the knowledge, raise a dragon banner and declare himself the heir to the Iron Throne? Jon didn’t believe the throne was either his right or his duty, and even if he had, it still wouldn’t have been something he wanted.

Robb had also told him about his kinswoman Daenerys, and the dragons in the east that lived again. But Jon couldn’t manage to make that mean anything, either. He would be glad to meet her, if he ever had the chance, but was he to sail halfway around the world, leaving all the family he had, to go and meet a stranger, because she was the younger sister of the man who had fathered him, whom neither of them had known?

But if not, what was he to do? He was a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch, but Alliser Thorne was now the Lord Commander at Castle Black. When Jon had first heard the news, his heart had sunk a little; he’d imagined Thorne’s malicious pleasure in having that power over him, and all that the man might do to enjoy it. He’d known for certain that he could have been gone twice as long, and suffered twice the misery, and Thorne wouldn’t have let go of any of his resentment and dislike.

And Jon hadn’t been wrong about that. He’d only been wrong about how much power Thorne would have over him, which was none. Lord Commander Mormont had been a power in his own right; Father had considered him an equal, a man to treat with. But Alliser Thorne was nothing to the King in the North but a supplicant. Jon had ridden through the gates of Castle Black into a keep ten times the size he’d left it, thousands of men in black raising their swords to salute the King in the North, who was the man they truly looked to. At table that night, with Thorne eyeing him sullenly, Jon had known that with a word to Robb, he’d be the Lord Commander in the morning, without the least trouble about it. Less, even, than if he’d tried to be just one of the brotherhood. How could he be? Alliser would never be able to demand his obedience. It would be better for the Watch if he took the command openly, instead of pretending otherwise.

But Jon had no more right to do that than he did to take the Iron Throne. And he didn’t want to do it either. It didn’t feel like desertion. It felt as though his watch had ended, in that tomb under that hill; he was worn away and weary as if he’d already spent his whole life, and now would’ve been glad to just lie down and never have to leave Winterfell again.

Although even Winterfell didn’t fully feel like home, not anymore. He almost didn’t recognize the keep, or anyone else left in the household. Maester Luwin had passed away three months before, on the very day that the message from Brienne had reached them, Arya had told him: the message that he and Bran lived, and had been found. In his bed with his eyes shut the old man had heard it and smiled and breathed out his last, peacefully, as if the last tie holding him to the world had been gently loosed.

Even the food was different, full of warm spices and dried fruits: Robb’s queen was a woman of the far east, who’d brought foreign trade and foreign ways with her. And Robb had another three women and too many lovers to count besides, who’d given him eight children altogether. Jon had laughed himself almost to tears when Robb had hangdog been forced to confess it to him, just how many bastards he’d begotten, but the truth was, Jon understood: Robb had come home to an empty and shattered keep, and he’d tried to mend it, and the heart of what had been missing was their family.

So he’d bred up a new one—as fast as he ever could—and Jon was glad of it, truly and whole-heartedly glad; he’d already have died for any of his nephews and nieces, and he knew that in another month he would know them, and love them for themselves, and not only as his brother’s children.

But it wasn’t his family. His father was gone, and Robb would always be his brother, but he was also now someone else, the King in the North, as if someone had made a great painting of some ancient hero and stood it up in front of him, so you had to crane your head around it to see him. Jon had spent all his childhood trying with ferocious hunger to be Robb’s equal, or at least to be his rival. It was strange now to think back to those days; he couldn’t grasp the same feelings. He’d loved Robb and he’d envied Robb, painfully, and now only love was left.

They’d only just started on wargames with Father before the royal visit had come; they’d had but three sessions. Jon remembered them sharply because he’d felt miserably sour, and had struggled to hide it, after Robb had easily won every one of his challenges all three times. By the end of the last session, Father hadn’t just been pleased, he’d been surprised, as if Robb had gone past his furthest hopes; he’d cupped Robb’s face, smiling at him a little puzzledly, as if he didn’t know what to make of it. His look was still vivid in Jon’s mind, and the memory of how ashamed and unhappy he’d felt that he hadn’t been able to earn it for himself.

That misery, that envy, had been so strong in him that he’d felt it like some great siege engine grinding away inside him, a driving force pressing him forward. Now it had all suddenly become—a bit of a joke. No, he’d not done quite as well at wargames as the terrible Wolf of the North, who’d torn apart every army that had ever dared take the field against him. No, he hadn’t made himself a king, he hadn’t conquered himself a realm, he hadn’t seduced a hundred women and a hundred men.

And it was only a joke, because none of that was anything that Jon envied. He didn’t feel it a failure not to have done those things; he didn’t want to have done them. He couldn’t help but see now that he’d never truly wanted the same things as Robb at all. This was what Robb had wanted: to be great. He’d wanted to lead, to rule; he’d had a hunger to be out in front of the pack, the eyes of all men upon him with admiration. To him, Father’s approval had meant that he was on the right path towards it.

But all that Jon had ever really wanted had been the look. He’d wanted Father to look at him the way that he looked—upon his firstborn son. Upon his own true son, the child of the woman he loved, and not the bastard of his sister, whom he’d taken in to hide at a cost of bitter pain. Jon could have stepped into Robb’s place, he could have won ten thousand battles on the back of a dragon, he could have had all the world gazing up at him in awe, and none of it would have been worth anything to him next to one smile, one moment of feeling himself his father’s greatest pride and joy. Not even for always, but only just to have—a turn at it.

It didn’t help to know that there had been a reason he’d never quite gotten it. The reason, if Jon had known it at the time, wouldn’t have stopped him wanting that look; he’d have gone right on longing, trying, working for it. But now he could never have it, he could never be good enough to earn it, because Father was dead. And he didn’t know what there was left for him to want or to be, even here in Winterfell.

He was sitting on the bed, a hand resting on Ghost’s head where the wolf was curled up against him. Ghost had grown thin himself, all those years in the north, and it was taking him a while to get back his weight; he’d always been slower to grow than the others. They were looking out the window into the snowbound woods, both tired and sluggish, when a knock came on the door; Jon said, “Enter,” and then rose with a jerk of surprise so great that Ghost roused and jumped down to stand alert beside him: it was Lady Catelyn, her face taut with sharp tension.

“May I come in?” she said formally. He stared at her before he recovered a little and helplessly gestured a welcome; he didn’t know what else to do but be formal in answer. She’d never so much as spoken to him before if she could help it. But she came in, and looked around the rooms. “I hope the furnishings are to your taste,” she said. “If not, you should speak to Lady Walda, and she will have them changed.”

“They’re fine,” Jon said, even more bewildered. He was only waiting for her to say whatever she’d come to say, and he didn’t understand why she was saying anything else, unless she was trying to be polite enough beforehand to excuse herself to Robb for it. But she didn’t need to; he’d never complained of her to Robb before, and he wouldn’t start now. He couldn’t do such a thing to him. And what could Robb have done, if he had? She was his mother.

The years hadn’t changed her so much. There was a little silver shot through her red hair, and lines of care around her eyes and a little more graven about her mouth, but she had always had a frowning, severe look, for him anyway. The new fashion of the court was for gowns slashed with silk, in many colors, but she still kept to the more plain older style herself; he could have walked around a corner ten years ago and met her, and not been surprised. Except that she was standing in his room.

Lady Catelyn looked down at the thing she’d brought with her, in her hands: it was another wooden ring like the one in Bran’s room. “I saw you looking at this,” she said. “At the one I made for Bran and Rickon. It is a prayer ring. A mother makes it to ask the Seven to watch over her children, when they are in danger, and she has no power to save them.”

He was listening, still waiting; he still had no idea what she wanted to say to him, and if he’d tried to guess, for a thousand years, he wouldn’t have imagined it, for she added, without looking at him, “And this is the only other one I ever made. For you, when you had the red fever.”

Jon stood speechless. Ghost whined a little at his feet, giving voice to his feelings. He would have liked to whine himself, and maybe to go and cringe under the bed.

After a moment, Lady Catelyn went on, stiffly, “It was my fault you fell ill. I…” She stopped briefly, her lips pressed tight, and then said, “I had wished you ill. I wished you…dead,” and she said it as though it was something dreadful, but it was easier to hear than the first part had been. He could understand that, he could believe it.

But she didn’t stop there. “And then, when you did fall sick, and were like to die… I knew I was a monster, a criminal before the gods. Who should the Mother hate most, but one who would wish harm on a motherless child? And so…that night, as you lay burning, I sat beside your bed and wove the wheel, so I might pray to the Seven to forgive my crime, and spare your life. And I swore upon it before them that if only they granted my prayer…I would be a mother to you truly. I would treat you as my own, and ask Ned to give you the Stark name.”

She wasn’t looking at him, which was just as well. Jon didn’t know what was on his face. He felt numb all over. She finished, “And then… your fever broke. And with it, so too did my promise. I left your bedside even before you awakened, and I hid the prayer wheel away in a chest, that no one would know of it and guess what a heartless, shameful oathbreaker I was.”

She still hadn’t looked at him. After a moment more, she said, “I mean to speak to Robb tomorrow, to have him give you the name, as Ned should have done. He would do it himself as soon as he thought of it, I am sure. I thank the gods that my son—that your brother—has a more open heart, a truer heart, than do I. And I thank them even more that you do, as well. Not a man in ten thousand would have done for his brother what you did for Bran. It is to you that I owe his life, you whom I mistreated and betrayed. I broke my promise to the gods, that I made on your wheel. So it was to you that they gave my second prayer, to grant or refuse. I will never forget it, nor ever forgive myself. I cannot even—”

She stopped; there were tears glistening in her eyes, and her mouth was trembling. She continued as if she had to force herself to keep speaking. “I cannot even pretend that I would have said any of this to you, if…if we had not learned the truth of your parentage. No matter what you had done for Bran, I fear I would have continued to poison my own life and yours with this bitterness. Everything good that you ever did was twisted in my sight. The better you were—the more honorable, the more diligent, the braver and more true—the worse it was to me. But for what little it now is worth, I wish to acknowledge that I knew, all along, that I wronged you. You were utterly undeserving of my spite, and I knew it. I do not say this to you to ask for your forgiveness. I know it is too late now to make amends, or to be to you any part of what I should have been. I only wish you to know that I am truly sorry for it.”

She finished. She still didn’t look towards him, only stood rigidly a moment longer as she gathered herself inwardly, the way she’d taught her children to do. All his life he’d heard her correct them if they fidgeted, or showed discomfort, or moved without purpose: they were to control their bodies as they were to control their speech, a thing that showed their good manners. Arya had been lectured twice a day sometimes. And Catelyn had never corrected him, had never told him to do it, but…he’d learned it anyway. He was holding himself equally still even now.

She drew one breath in carefully and let it out again, and then she turned as if she meant to go. He still hadn’t found words, but he lurched forward and into her way, and she halted. Her eyes were still downcast, and he saw for the first time that the same lines of anger in her face, which he’d always feared with an inward cringing, were misery as well. He said, in desperation, “Is it?” She went still, then looked up at him, with her eyes—Robb’s eyes, and Arya’s—wet and hopeless. “Is it too late?” It was an earnest question. He didn’t know.

Her mouth worked, and her face crumpled a little before she managed to smooth it again. “After what I have done,” she said, barely above a whisper, and then her voice broke. She stopped, trembling. The prayer wheel was between them. It was old, thick with clinging dust; the edges of some of the skirts of the figures had crumbled, and some of the ties had broken, so twigs had sprung out of the frame. He reached out and took it, and she let it go into his hands.

He tried to imagine her making it, at his bedside, while he moaned with fever. The image didn’t want to come clear in his mind; the boy in the bed kept being Bran, not him. It wasn’t a thing he’d ever imagined, ever wanted, because it would have been like wanting—a dragon, a throne. A mother. Things that weren’t for him, things he couldn’t ever have. Only it seemed now that the chance of them had been there all along, so much closer than he’d ever imagined. Hidden from him only to keep him safe. “You saved me,” he said softly, looking down at the ring: almost a question, trying the words out, trying to believe them.

But even as he said them, he knew that they were true. “You did save me,” he said again, more strongly, and she lifted her eyes to his face again. “Father was the worst liar in the world. He never even tried. I don’t…after Robb told me, I realized I don’t remember him ever telling me, even once, that I was his son. Other people told me. Someone called me Stark’s bastard, and someone else told me what it meant. Not him. He only told me that I had his blood, and that he loved me. I asked him if I could call him Father, and he said yes. He gave me my name. But he couldn’t lie, not even to protect me. He had to make you do it for him.”

He paused, and asked slowly, “During the royal visit, the great feast. Was it…did you ask for me to be left out?” That day had been another bright memory of bitterness in him: standing outside in the courtyard, pretending he wanted to be alone and cold and drilling with his sword, with all the lights of the Great Hall illuminated, laughter spilling out of it; pretending that he didn’t care that his father had—allowed him to be left out. It had launched him towards the Night’s Watch; he’d meant it as a reproach for Father, when he’d told him that he wished to go, and it had hurt all the worse that Father had agreed so readily.

Catelyn was staring at him, wide-eyed, and then she shook her head a little. “No. I…would have been glad to. But Ned had always insisted, on feast days, that you be seated with the family. So I wouldn’t have tried. I thought afterwards that he’d left you out as an apology, because he had accepted the position as Robert’s Hand.”

“He didn’t want Robert to see me,” Jon said, with clear certainty. “He didn’t want to risk him seeing Lyanna or Rhaegar in my face. He must have been afraid that Robert suspected.” He huffed a short laugh. “Of course he was afraid. He and Robert were together the whole war. Robert would have known that Father didn’t go whoring. And if you had kept your promise, if you’d told him to ask the king for my name, and taken me as your own…Robert wouldn’t have believed it anymore. He only believed it because you did. That’s why Father couldn’t tell you the truth.”

Catelyn jerked away, turning back into the room; her hands twisting over one another. She stood for a moment with them clenched tight, and then she was shaking her head, turning back towards him, and she said, fiercely blazing, “And he was wrong! Better he had told me, better all the world had learned the truth. What would Robert have done? Demanded we hand you over, an innocent child, to be punished for the sin of your parents? Let him come and take you, then, if he could! Better that, better a war, than what Ned did—to you, to me, to his own family! If I had known, would I have suffered him to tear a child of mine from my arms, and make them live motherless, in sorrow and shame, for fear of Robert Baratheon? Gods forbid it! I would have died first! But I should have known,” she added, with a sobbing gasp. “If only I had kept faith, if I had kept my word, he would have been forced to tell me, then, while you were still young enough to forgive how I had treated you—”

She was weeping, her face wrenched with misery. Jon put the wheel down carefully, his own eyes hazed with tears; he turned back and took her hands in his, and said, “I’m young enough,” choking, and felt that after all, it was true; that he was still young enough, that he still had a whole life yet to be lived.

She dragged in a breath through her tears, and reaching out one hand groped a few paces and lowered herself into a chair, without letting go of him, drawing him along. He fell to his knees and she drew his head into her lap and bent over him, and he wept together with her, with his mother, who was cradling his head in her arms.

#

The tears had stopped, but they were still sitting together before the fire, staring into it; Jon was leaning his head against her knee, and she was stroking her fingers through his hair, beginning to grow out again after the barber at the Fist had all but shaved him to the scalp. There was a deep quiet in him, something grating and wrong fitted suddenly with a snap into its proper place, and he thought she felt the same, as strange as it should have been to be so at ease with her, so quickly.

But he hadn’t just known her as an enemy, as the woman who hated him. She was the mother of his brothers and sisters. He knew what she was to her children; it had been the thing he could never hope for. If she’d ever so much as shown him the thinnest crack in the walls, he knew he’d have flung himself at it ten times as desperately as ever he’d sought for Father’s approval, no matter how hopeless it might have seemed. And now instead she’d opened the gates wide and welcomed him in, and told him he had a right to be there; that it had been his own home all along, barred from him only by a mistake.

So he was glad, deeply glad, to go on sitting there, to let himself imagine this moment into all of his life, mending a thousand hurts and filling ten thousand empty places, as if she’d been there all along. It felt like a kind of magic, as if he’d gotten into another world, where she had been. He didn’t want to move and break the spell.

The knock on the door made them both go still; he raised his head to look as Arya opened it, her eyes brilliant and smiling. “Jon! He’s—” and she stopped, staring in utter astonishment between them, as if she thought she’d also gone tumbling into another world, and didn’t know what to make of it.

Jon stared back at her as if he’d been caught out at something, and Catelyn’s hand on his head trembled a little, as if she felt the same way, and thought of taking it away. But instead she didn’t, and only said, “Is something wrong, my love?”

Arya jerked to stare at her again, almost accusingly. “Bran’s awake,” she said, but her tone said what on earth is going on.

Catelyn drew a sharp breath, and closed her eyes. “Gods be praised,” she said, low, and then she stroked his head again and said softly, “We should go to him.”

He nodded; she rose from the chair and went out of the chamber, and Arya stood to one side to let her pass, but put herself back in his way with a demanding stare. He only smiled down at her helplessly, blinking away tears, and said, low, “Come on. Let’s go see Bran,” and put his arm around her shoulders; she was still frowning as they went back to Bran’s room.

Robb was sitting at Bran’s bedside, and Bran was propped up on pillows, his eyes drifting shut, and each time he opened them again, he had a look of uncertainty, as if he wasn’t sure where he was. His hand was gripped in Summer’s fur; the wolf was pressed up against his side, and licked at his face every so often. He opened his eyes again and stared up at Catelyn a little puzzled as she came and put her arms around him, kissing his brow. “Bran, my love, do you remember?” she said, low and urgent.

“Mother,” he said. “You were crying at Riverrun. You told the Blackfish you’d never see me and Rickon again. I tried to tell you we were all right, but you didn’t hear me.” Catelyn flinched back, staring at him, and then Bran frowned and looked up at her. “I wasn’t really there, was I?”

Her mouth trembled. “No, my love,” she said low, stroking the hair from his face.

“I remember too much,” he said. “It’s all—mixed up, inside. I don’t know which parts are me.” He frowned again and put his hand on his throat. “What’s wrong with my voice?”

Robb said, “It’s broken. You’ve been asleep a very long time.”

Bran lifted his hands and looked at them, turning them over with rising bewilderment: the hands of a grown man. He put them down again, resting them on Summer’s head. He said, “It didn’t seem that long. It just seemed like…forever.”

“Not long at all, then?” Robb said, trying to tease, but Bran turned and looked at him, with his eyes strange, and Robb fell silent.

Bran said, “It was night when you left. You woke me and told me you were going for Father. That really happened.” Robb swallowed and nodded. “I tried to tell Rickon that you’d be back soon—you’d all be back soon, with Father and Mother. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen.” He was silent a moment. “I knew, too,” he said. “I just didn’t know that I knew. I thought I was just afraid.”

Then he looked up again, to the foot of the bed. Meera was standing there with hope and anxious worry warring in her face: she’d been at Bran’s side as often as any of them. “You were there in the cave the whole time, weren’t you? You and Jon.” She nodded, with a wavering smile. “I saw you, guarding me from the dead. After…after Hodor and Jojen died.” Bran’s face crumpled a little, trembling, and Jon was almost glad to see it, the real feeling. “I’m sorry,” Bran said, low and choked, looking up at her with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry. It was my fault they found us. I didn’t listen to the three-eyed raven. I thought…I thought that I was strong enough. I thought I could stop the Night’s King…”

Robb reached out and took hold of his hand. “You did stop him,” he said quietly, and turned to look at Meera and over at Jon as well. “You all did. If he’d chased us in force, after the Milkwater, there’s every chance he would have caught us before we reached the Wall. Even if he’d only come hard on our heels, and struck Castle Black then, when we were weak and unready, he might well have broken through. And after that—it was almost a year before I began to think our preparations good enough to give us a fighting chance; two more before I had any confidence. That’s the time you gave us, you and all the company that went north with you: he was so busy trying to get at you that he gave us time to grow strong enough to destroy him instead. You saved the North,” and Jon swallowed, his heart so full of joy that he almost didn’t know how to bear it.

Chapter Text

“You are under no obligation to take him,” Mother told Brienne, still trying to change her mind, but Sansa didn’t bother. Privately she agreed with Mother: whatever Robb said about how Jaime had changed, and proven himself, it still wasn’t sensible for Brienne to put herself in the power of the Lannisters. But Brienne wasn’t a sensible person, and she’d already promised to marry Jaime, so there wasn’t any point wasting time on arguing with her. Instead what they needed to do was make it as clear as possible to him and all the Lannisters that she had the full protection of House Stark at her back, and if they gave her trouble, they’d get more than they wanted in return.

So Sansa told Brienne that she wanted to make the wedding a great celebration, and to invite lords from the south for the feasting. “I know you don’t want a fuss for your own sake,” she added, before Brienne could start to make the protests that Sansa could see immediately filling up her mouth, “but we could use this to strengthen the peace a great deal and maybe clear some of the bad blood. And—don’t raise Jaime’s hopes, but I’ll try to persuade the Lannisters to send Prince Tommen,” so of course Brienne gave in.

None of that was a lie; Sansa did mean to strengthen the peace as much as she could: by showing the lords of the south that the North wasn’t the poor country cousin of the realm anymore, and that House Stark was a threat to reckon with even aside from their invincible king. And she meant to do it no matter how many protests everyone around her put up. “Yes, you do have to stay,” she told Rickon sternly, when he tried to escape the festivities by claiming that he and Lyanna suddenly had to go back to Bear Island right away. “It’s a few feasts and a ball. You’ll survive. If you want, you can just stand in a corner and glower at people.”

Arya tried to get out of it too, but it was easier to change her mind. “I have work for you to do,” Sansa said. “We have enemies coming, not just friends. I want you to just appear next to them, all night long. Preferably with a knife in hand, and well in reach of their throats, even if—especially if—they have guards with them. I want those people to all go away knowing that if House Stark really needs someone dead, if they make themselves that much of a danger to us, they’ll die.”

That was enough to reconcile her to attending. “Can you invite Joffrey?” she asked.

“Would he leave here alive if I did?” Sansa said dryly, and Arya only scowled in answer.

Robb started out with only mild complaints about the expense and the bother of hosting such a large party, and didn’t really kick over the traces until he saw the new tapestries in the Great Hall. Sansa had used the excuse of the wedding to ask many of their bannermen to send needlewomen to them for the weeks before, to help with preparations, and with that small army she’d been able to finish off the lavish new hangings that she’d already had their own women working on: a series running the whole length of the hall, celebrating all of Robb’s great victories. They’d even been able to finish off the one showing the triumphant destruction of the Night’s King at the Iron Fist, to hang behind the throne.

She’d been careful to tell all the women that they were a surprise for the king, and they all had to pretend they were working on a set of allegories of the seasons, so Robb didn’t have a chance to start howling until they went up the very night before the arrival of the honored guests—Prince Tommen was coming, and so were dozens of southern nobles—when it was too late to take them down. Robb did want to send men hunting for the old hangings anyway, but Sansa managed to distract him by deliberately letting slip that Vervain was also going to be performing a new song, all about the destruction of the army of the dead.

“That’s even better!” Robb said. “You’ll make me look like my head’s swelled to three times my size!”

“The song’s not just about you. It’s all about Jaime and Brienne’s quest, to honor them, and Jon and Meera and Bran as well,” Sansa said. More specifically, a lot of the song was about Brienne heroically saving more than half of House Stark, and the great debt that the kingdom of the North owed her, which they’d be glad to repay.

Robb glared at her. “Oh, aye, I’m sure it is. And I’m also sure it ends with me swanning in like the Warrior himself from on high to smash the Night’s King with my invincible army, doesn’t it!”

Sansa certainly hoped so; she’d made sure to get Vervain all sorts of details from the men about the battle, and encouraged him to make a point of just how big the horde had been, and how handily Robb had torn them apart. “Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t do heroic things and ask a great troubadour not to sing about them, especially with such an important audience here to listen to his work,” she said, unremorsefully. “We could send him away, if you insist,” which she knew perfectly well Robb wasn’t going to, since Vervain had been able to wheedle his way into the royal bedchamber on a regular basis even after Robb had come home.

Brandon and Bert and Elia were also going to be at the tables, to demonstrate that the next generation of House Stark was promising, and to start powerful lords thinking about the matches that House Stark was going to be making, very soon, for all the king’s children, and whether they might not want to be on the other end of some of them. Fortunately, the children weren’t going to put up a fight: instead, two weeks ago she’d told them very austerely that if they behaved well at dinnertime from then until the guests arrived, she’d allow them to come to the wedding feast and stay up past bedtime, and even Elia had been a model of decorum ever since.

But the greatest prize she really wanted out on display was Jon: for everyone in Westeros to know that House Stark now had the priceless treasure of a second man of war, a man who could command their armies and master their bannermen, who’d stand as regent if ever anything happened to Robb before his sons were grown.

She tracked Jon down in the nursery, playing a game of aughts with Brandon and Bert on the other side. Elia and Brynda and little Tral were all climbing on his back, and Wendel was waiting patiently in line with a book. “I’d say you were under siege, but I think the conquest is well begun,” Sansa said, and they all at once set up a clamor of protest at the idea that she might take Jon away. Instead she had to take a turn at reading and play a round herself before she could extract him, and even then the children wheedled a promise to come back after dinner out of him. “If you give them an inch, they’ll take the whole kingsroad,” Sansa warned him, although to be fair, she’d yielded more time than she should have herself, between playing games and cuddling Talisin. “You should start as you mean to go on.”

“But I’m happy to go on as I’ve begun,” he said, smiling back at them, a light in his face that made her smile, too.

“I suppose it agrees with you,” she said. “You’re looking better. Robb was worried how thin and worn-down you were, when you came back.”

“Is that why I’m being fed like a goose for Winterfair?” Jon snorted. “It’s on the hour, I think. Some page is handing me a hot pasty, or Robb’s sending for wine and bread and meat, or Mother’s insisting I come and have tea and cakes. What?” he asked, because she couldn’t help the half-bewildered shake of her head, hearing him say Mother just like that. He wasn’t even making a deliberate effort, she could tell, because as soon as he asked the question, he realized exactly what, and looked abashed, as if it had just come out without thinking.

“I’m glad,” Sansa said. “It’s just funny that it’s taking all the rest of us longer to get used to it than either of you. I think Arya’s still waiting for one or both of you to pull off your faces and turn out to be strangers underneath.”

“That’s what we did do, only the other way around,” Jon said. “We took off the faces we’d worn to each other, all those years, and we were family underneath.”

He listened to her request with a small frown, and she was prepared for whatever protests he was about to marshal, but when she’d finished, he only said slowly, “I’ll do it if you think best.”

“But?” she said, curious; he still sounded doubtful.

“Robb’s told me what you’ve done for the realm,” Jon said. “And I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Those caches saved our lives, that you laid down. We could mark our pace by when we found them. If something happens to Robb—it’s you who’ll be ruling the North, until Brandon comes of age, and if he has any sense, he’ll go on listening to you after. Now what have I said?” he added, a little wryly, because she was staring at him. “I’ll help you any way I can, but you can’t think I’d try to take your place?”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, bemused. It wasn’t that she’d thought Jon would want her place, but she would have expected him to want—Robb’s. To think of himself as the ruler of the realm, having the final say. She hadn’t worried about it; she’d been confident she’d be able to manage him. But that wasn’t the same thing as—having him offer to help her, having him acknowledge her work. There weren’t many men who liked doing that even when she wasn’t standing between them and the power of the throne.

She did want to put him at the high table at Robb’s right hand anyway. “It’s still important,” she explained. “There are men who won’t want to obey a woman, and others who won’t want to fear one. Our enemies would try to use that, if they had the chance.”

Jon’s face hardened. “And if we show them that they won’t have that chance—there’s one less reason for them to go at Robb,” he said. She nodded, surprised again a little, and he nodded back to her, grimly determined. “Aye. Is there anything else I can do?”

He meant it. She’d arranged dozens of smaller private gatherings with many of the guests: there were especially powerful bannermen who needed to be shown more attention, and some of dubious loyalty who’d been invited for a little reinforcement. There were riverlords who needed courting, for the sake of trade, and so in case war with the south ever came, they’d stay united behind House Tully and join Robb. There were southern noblemen whose opinions would matter to Tywin, if they came back with reports of the strength and unity of House Stark, and others who might even be willing to ally with the North. Yara was coming, and bringing along three of her most powerful captains; she’d written that she was thinking of their daughters for Rheon, which was her excuse for bringing them to Winterfell to be presented to Robb, but Sansa knew that what she really wanted was for House Stark to impress them, which would help her keep them in check.

But Robb wouldn’t be able to come to more than a handful of those meetings himself; he’d be too busy hosting in the Great Hall, and anyway she had to keep him in reserve for only the most important guests. She’d hoped to drag Rickon and Jon to a few of the others, at best, but instead Jon came to every last one of them. He was even better for it than Robb would have been: much more grim and stern. Every last one of her dubious lords eyed him a little uneasily, and swallowed many of the complaints and needling remarks that she’d been expecting out of them.

He was even more use when she met with the Wildling chieftains that Mance Rayder had sent—also men that he thought could use some impressing—because one of them was a Longhill chief, and two of the men who’d gone north to the three-eyed raven had been from that tribe. Jon took the chief’s hand, and spoke to him of the men’s bravery, and asked after their families. It couldn’t have been better, and Sansa seized the opening to give them rich gifts in thanks: the Wildlings liked presents as much as anyone, but it put their backs up if they felt they were being bribed; they had to feel like the gifts came from respect.

Jon also came with her to meet with Ser Gerold Lydden, one of the westerlords who’d come along with Prince Tommen: his father was one of Tywin’s inner circle, the current Master of Law, and she knew very well that his heir had been sent to poke and pry at their house, and find any chances of trouble that Tywin could stir up. It was quickly clear that she was one of his main targets. Ser Gerold was a smiling and handsome knight, golden haired and blue-eyed, and he paid court to her in a carefully calculated way. He started out lightly, trying to see if she’d encourage him at all—Tywin would have been delighted to have her make such a stupid match, asking for a knife in her back or Robb’s or both—and when she didn’t, making clear she wouldn’t take him seriously as a suitor, he became just a little bit aggressive instead, without crossing a line where she could reasonably take offense, while also raising the serious issue of the tax relief that the crown had given the Riverlands in thanks for Robb’s support against Daenerys.

At least, that was the way he put it. The crown hadn’t given anything, of course; the riverlords had just taken the tax relief when Robb had told them they could, instead of taking Clegane’s attack on him as a cause for war, and they’d been sending a substantial portion of that relief north, calling it gifts instead of taxes, one small step from openly changing back their allegiance.

Tywin had swallowed it temporarily, but he’d found out when Robb had started mustering his army to go North—there were too many southron spies in the North to keep that from him—and he’d started a muster of his own at the same time. Sansa hadn’t been able to formally object; for once it had been reasonable and not vicious, because Robb had started their muster going less than a week after Brienne had ridden away, before there was any real cause for him to point to for him to do it. Sansa had even argued against it for just that reason, that they’d be giving the Lannisters an excuse, but for once Robb had overruled her.

“No,” he’d said, grimly. “I’m not waiting. She’s gone to find Bran, and she won’t come back until she’s done it. And when she does, she’ll have found them, too. I can smell it,” and she’d fallen silent, because she’d felt that he was right, even though it hadn’t made any real sense.

So Robb had raised his levies, and when they’d got the first raven, the one Brienne had sent telling them that she’d picked up Bran’s trail with a tribe of Wildlings she’d called the quiet people, Robb had ridden out for the Wall with his guard the same day. It had won the war: he’d already been marching along the Bitter when that last frantic trio of ravens had reached them, telling them of the desperate flight coming south.

But that meant that now Tywin had an army raised in the south, inches away from the Riverlands, while much of their own forces were still up in the far north. He wasn’t going to start a war against them while Jaime was in the North, in their power. But Jaime and Brienne would be leaving after the wedding, to go and make their home in Casterly Rock, and Ser Gerold had been sent to take the Riverlands back with them, with that saber to rattle at House Stark.

He said in over-effusive tones of apology, “King Joffrey charged me to express his regrets to…your brother,” avoiding even the courtesy of giving Robb his title. “The burden of the payments to Meereen has been greater than expected, and though his sentiments remain unchanged, the relief must be suspended henceforth. I’m certain you will understand our position,” he added, and sent his eyes traveling slow and lascivious up and down her body, and ended in something that wasn’t quite a wink, an over-friendly crinkling of his eyes that just felt like one. 

It was meant to make her angry, and it worked; her left hand, under the table, tightened until the nails dug into her palm, although she kept her smile the same while she mastered herself, to think about the answer to give him, and then he was jerking a little in alarm as Jon stalked around to the other side of the table, his face a hard, furious mask, and seized him by the collar and the arm and heaved him out of his chair and hauled him stumbling straight to the door. “The next time you think of offering insult to our king’s Hand, I’ll ask him how many pieces of you he wants me to send back to yours,” Jon said by his ear, low and murderous, and shut the door on him.

 “I don’t need defending,” she said sharply, as he came back to the desk.

“Aye, but you did need time,” Jon said. “Otherwise you’d’ve given him your answer and slapped his face for him, wouldn’t you?” She blinked at him. “If you decide you have to put up with him, you can tell him I’m near a savage, after ten years living in the wastes. And I can follow him round the keep glowering the rest of the wedding.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You want to do that anyway.”

“What I want to do is beat him out of the keep with the flat of my blade, if he doesn’t give me an excuse to gut him on the way,” Jon said, a growl, and she couldn’t really blame him. “Do we have to put up with him?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ll need to speak to Robb about it.”

Jon helped her with that, too: she told him everything she’d been able to learn about the forces Tywin had raised, and he laid them out on the war table along the border of the Riverlands, taking guesses about where they’d cross the Blackwater, where they’d have the Freys put their men, and which keeps they’d come at first. She only needed to have a page slip Robb away from his hosting for half an hour. He came to the war room and nodded as Jon took him through what he’d done. “Right,” Robb said. “Let’s throw on another fifty thousand for them.”

“Fifty thousand!” Jon said.

“Well, we don’t want to make it too easy for ourselves, do we?” Robb said, in mock earnest. The two of them put out the markers, and then Robb stood back, studying the map frowning; he changed the positions of a dozen companies and looked at it again; then a slow, vicious smirk spread over his face and he gave a little shrug, deliberately careless. “Let him try it if he likes.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

Robb gave her a wounded look and then grinned as she frowned severely back. “Aye, I’m sure. Jon’s right: their greatest advantage is having the Freys at the top of the Neck, dividing us from our allies in the Riverlands, and this is the best way they can use it, so that’s what they’ll do. But I won’t come at them through the Riverlands. We’ll tell Uncle Edmure and his men to just hunker down in their keeps. Meanwhile, Manderly will send every ship in White Harbor to take up our men, anywhere they can get to on our eastern coast, and we’ll land them at Duskendale, just the way I thought Daenerys might. I’ll only have thirty thousand men, but we’ll run straight for the gates of King’s Landing while the Lannisters are busy wasting their time besieging half a dozen keeps in the Riverlands. When they turn around and try to come back, the riverlords will come out and we’ll have them caught between us, while the Freys sit in the Neck staring at Moat Cailin. No trouble about it at all,” he added breezily, and she sighed with relief and sent him back to the welcome dinner he was hosting for Prince Tommen.

“Now can I chase that twat Lydden out the gates?” Jon said, a little wistfully.

“No,” Sansa said, not without considering it. “But I won’t give him any explanations, either. When he goes back to the Red Keep and tells them that I had you throw him out of our meeting and wouldn’t speak with him again, Tywin will know that means I’m not worried—and then he’ll worry.”

Jon did keep glowering at Lydden throughout the wedding feasts, between helping her ride herd on the rest of their family, which was more badly-needed help. She had to send him to chase Rickon back into the hall five times in the three nights, and to stop Arya from actually stabbing people twice.

And then Robb tried to make his own escape, on the night of the wedding itself, just before Vervain’s performance was meant to begin. He’d chosen his time carefully, waiting until Sansa’s guard was down. He’d been the one to escort Brienne to the tree, and after they’d come back from the godswood to the feasting, he’d made the first toast to the newlyweds, danced three dances, and even went around the tables to speak to many of the guests. He’d waited until the first candles were starting to burn low before he finally sneaked out.

Sansa only just barely realized he was gone in time to wave an urgent delay to the musicians, and have them keep the dancing going, while she and Jon and Mother fanned out through the keep to urgently hunt him down. Although it turned out to be Jaime Lannister who actually found him. She was just coming upstairs into the old family chambers in the west tower when she overheard their voices coming from Father’s old study, arguing.

“Why are you making a fuss?” Robb said. “Go listen to it yourself, if you like! Anyone would think you wanted to have me hung up in stars for half the realm.”

“I couldn’t care less about half the realm,” Jaime said. “I want you hung up in stars for my father. Yes, he’s delighted to have me married. Now that he’s gotten that step out of the way, he’ll want something else, and if Brienne doesn’t cooperate within a year, he’ll start informing me I’m to swap in a nubile young maiden, or else.”

“And you think it’ll make a difference to him, that I’ve sat through some mortifying song, a thousand miles away?” Robb said, incredulously.

“You’re the king,” Jaime said. “If you don’t bother to show up for the song about your triumph, it’s a failure and it dies in your hall. You smile and clap and throw the jongleur a bag of gold, the song’s a success, and every other visiting songster will sing it from here to the Red Keep. And yes, it’ll make a difference to my father, to hear a song about Brienne saving all the children of House Stark. I need him to at least worry a bit that you’d go to war for her sake.”

“I would go to war for her sake!” Robb said, in dudgeon, which made Jaime stiffen in alarm. “Of course I’d go to war for her sake. She did save half my family, if not all of it!”

He was glaring, and Jaime looked grim a moment; then he raised his chin in defiance and said, “Good. Then I assume you won’t mind granting her the right to bear the direwolf sigil on her arms, and dower her with a holdfast in the North?”

“No? I don’t mind at all?” Robb said, in baffled tones, and when Jaime stared at him added with more heat, “No! I don’t mind! A holdfast and a coat of arms?”

“Oh, but listening to a song, that’s the hard limit!” Jaime said.

Robb threw up his arms a little and sighed. “All right, fine,” he said, half despairingly. “I’ll come down and listen to my own praises. I suppose you’d like me to have him sing it again tomorrow?”

“Why, what a splendid idea,” Jaime said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the desk with his hip, full of smug victory. “What are you even complaining about? Think about all the southern noblewomen visiting for the feast. Isn’t this a wonderful opportunity to impress your next mistress? Surely only nine whelps isn’t enough of a litter.”

Robb gave him an annoyed look, and then his mouth suddenly curled in a slow, malicious smirking. “Well, if you really wanted your father to worry,” he said, grinning at him wickedly.

Jaime glared back at him furiously. “Fuck off, Stark.”

Robb laughed. “Maybe I’ll just mention to Brienne that any time she likes, I’d be more than happy to help her keep any and all of her Lannisters on…a very short leash,” he added, and eyed Jaime lasciviously up and down. Jaime tried to keep glaring, but he’d turned red; it was perfectly obvious that he would also have been more than happy to have Robb helping Brienne do whatever she liked with him.

Unluckily for them, Mother and Jon had just caught up with Sansa right then—she hadn’t bothered to interrupt them, since Jaime was doing the work for her—and Mother said in a snarl from the doorway, “You will do no such thing,” as they both jumped like rabbits and stared out at her in wide-eyed horror.

“You, back to your tables,” Mother said to Robb icily. “And you, back to your wife,” she added to Jaime, and they both shamefacedly slipped past on either side of her and went opposite ways down the corridor to go back down to the Great Hall. Mother shook her head in outrage. “Sometimes I think it would be just as well if he could be shut up in the kennels with the wolves!” she said half under her breath, and stalked off after Robb, leaving Sansa to look at Jon, and Jon to look back at her, and as one they both darted into the study together and Jon shut the door and they both burst into snorting laughter stifled behind their hands.

The performance went off splendidly, although Mother didn’t stop glaring virulently at Robb and Jaime the entire time. The song was brilliant, and even Robb was blinking away tears at the very end, as Vervain sang of coming home in winter, after a long road running, with the gates wide and the warm hearth waiting, shelter and sanctuary and open arms. Sansa didn’t try to stop her own tears: in her head it was the yard at Riverrun, running to Robb’s arms, to freedom, the moment that still lived in her as the inexpressibly lucky second chance the gods had given her, to have back what she’d lost, what she’d never risk losing again. Beside her she heard Jon gasp in a wet breath and looked over to see him staring down, unashamed tears running down his own face. He looked up at her and smiled through them, and on an impulse she reached out and they clasped hands between them, his iron-hard grip comforting.

Brienne was nearly the only one in the hall who hadn’t cried; she was staring fixedly down at her plate with her head bowed, a blotchy agonized red in the face, even more miserable than Robb. She would probably have run away during the song herself, if Jaime hadn’t been holding her in place with her hand clasped firmly in both of his. When the song had ended, though, he lifted her trapped hand to his lips and kissed it, and said to her, “Well, my lady?” a little hoarsely. He was looking at her with his own wet eyes as if she was that same desperately sought shelter, for him, and seeing it, Sansa let out a small sigh of relief, feeling for the first time as if she could believe that he really wouldn’t betray Brienne, no matter what his father did.

Brienne shoved her chair back hurriedly, eager to escape, although she was blushing even more fiery red at all the lusty cheering that followed them down the full length of the Great Hall. Brienne was all but towing Jaime; he was smirking at everyone to either side the whole way, obviously pleased with himself and happy to drag out the procession, and only more when she shot him a desperate glare, but as soon as they’d made it past the grinning pages holding the doors open for them, he was off like an arrow and into the lead up the stairs, pulling her with him towards the waiting wedding chamber.

Even Mother looked a little mollified, watching them go, although she still cast a warning eye on Robb as the music picked up again. “There ought to be a guard upon that bedchamber,” she said darkly.

“Which of our guards is going to stop Robb?” Sansa said, raising an eyebrow.

Mother pressed her lips together and told Jon, “Then you must do it, and if your brother dares to try and go in there, you may tell him that if he does, I will come and take him out of it again, if I must pull him by the ear like a page.”

Sansa just barely managed not to burst out laughing all over again as soon as she imagined the look on Robb’s face. Jon was grinning too. “I don’t know, I think it might be treason,” he said, teasing.

Robb was leading out the next round of dancing with Goneril, since Talisa was too great with child, nearly at her confinement: she had gone to sit by one of the warmer hearths, with Walda and Nymeria, and Vervain singing to them all. The floor wasn’t thin of company: there were nearly twenty noblewomen visiting from the south to pad out the ranks.

Sansa suspected that more a few of them would have been very happy to join the harem, but the only one worth paying attention to was Lady Allinor of House Peake. Sansa eyed her narrowly. It wasn’t impossible that she only wanted to become a mistress of the king, but she was being a little too clever: she’d had the good sense to go sit beside Talisa and pay court to her instead of making cow eyes at Robb in the dancing. Over the last few days, she’d made efforts to talk to Mother, too, and to every other Stark she could get to. If Allinor was thinking it through that far, she wasn’t just starry-eyed over the King in the North, and she was too eligible. She was a widow, of an Osgrey knight who’d died in the Battle of the Blackwater, but she’d been a young girl when she’d been married. She was still only six and twenty now, and her husband had left her childless and with property. She could have made a real match, something that would matter to her house. If she’d come here instead, it was for a reason.

Sansa was just trying to think of what the reason might be when Mother said to Jon, in a familiar tentative way, “She is a charming woman,” and she was also looking across the hall at Allinor—who had been going to far more trouble to display her charms to Jon than to Robb, Sansa realized, feeling annoyed with herself for missing the obvious answer. That was an excellent reason: the unmarried brother of the king would be an ideal match for an ambitious and clever woman.

“I suppose she is,” Jon said.

“Shall I invite her to take tea with us tomorrow morning, perhaps?” Mother said, and Sansa listened a little tensely for Jon’s answer. Allinor was charming, and why wouldn’t Jon want a wife of his own, and children of his own? 

But instead he only said wryly, “Are you in such a hurry to be rid of me, then?” trying to make light of the question.

Of course Mother wouldn’t let him get away with that; she said a little impatiently, “You would not need to leave us. She would be glad to make her home in Winterfell…”

But then Jon put his hand on hers and said gently, “I can’t.” Mother paused. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be part of this family. I’m not ready to make another. And how could I ask a woman to cleave to me, when I’m not willing to cleave to her?” He jerked his chin a little towards Allinor. “Aye, she might be glad to make her home here, but House Stark wouldn’t come first with her. And she’d resent it, that it did come first with me. She’d have the right to resent it.” He gave a small snort. “I could only do it if I took a pack of them, like Robb, to be company for one another.”

“Seven forbid,” Mother said, picking up the joke he’d offered her. “One harem is more than enough for this keep.” But she heaved a small sigh, and looked at him with regret.

Sansa tried to share the feeling: Jon deserved his own family, after everything he’d gone through. But she couldn’t; there was only a huge selfish relief swelling in her. She was glad, desperately glad, that House Stark came first with him. She’d felt it, instinctively; she only now realized how much she ‘d already started to rely on it, on him, and she didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want him to marry Allinor Peake and have his own children—children that he’d surely love with all his heart, the way he loved Robb’s children. She was so glad he wasn’t going to.

But she also couldn’t help feeling like a selfish beast, being glad for something like that. She had to look away and take a few deep breaths to keep from going red with shame, and before she had collected herself, Mother was saying to Jon, “Then the two of you should join the dancing together. If you lead Sansa out, when you might easily have gone and asked her instead, it will be a gentle and courteous way to signal your lack of interest.”

She turned back and Jon was holding his hand out to her, smiling. She pushed aside the guilty feeling and smiled back and stood up with him to go and join the ranks forming for the dance. She noticed a moment too late that the musicians were striking up a set of Volantene dances. Jon threw her a look of dismay as he realized what he was in for: he’d barely even had a chance to see them danced yet, much less learn them himself. But everyone had already made room for them, just below Tommen and his partner Lady Gisele Mallister, so they just had to make the best of it; at least partners stayed together, and Volantene dances were mostly romping fun and you were meant to make up steps when it was your turn to go around on the outside.

But Jon was studying Robb and Goneril taking their turn with furious concentration, which was a terrible idea because Robb loved dancing and also showing off like mad—when it wasn’t anything useful for the kingdom, anyway—and Goneril was a slip of a girl and he could toss her around like a leaf. Sansa wanted to warn Jon off trying anything like it with her, but the music went into one of the whirling sections with the fast drumming just as it was their turn, and he couldn’t have heard her unless she’d shouted. And then he’d seized her by the waist and was swinging her up and around just as easily, so strong she couldn’t stop a small yelp of surprise, bracing herself on his shoulders. There was a half-guilty satisfaction glinting in his eye, as if he knew she wasn’t expecting it from him, and then swung her back down to guide her whirling all the way around him before he swung her up again.

Of course Robb saw him doing it, and naturally that meant he had to try and do him one better on the next turn; Goneril was lucky he didn’t turn her completely upside down. He gave Jon a panting grin as he swung her past, a challenge, and Jon looked at her, his brows raised to ask, and she narrowed her eyes at him mock-severely even as she gave him her hand, not really minding: it was like they were all children again, having a silly game in the yard. Jon grinned back a little sheepishly as he swung her up again, and then as he brought her back down he swung her around his body, turning with her twice without even letting her feet touch the floor before he was lifting her right back up again.

By the third time swinging around, her hair fell out of its carefully arranged heap of braids and coils, which had been meant to survive formal court dances and not the heat of battle, pins going tinkling to the ground. Jon looked down in dismay, hesitating, but she was laughing, breathless: it was like running with the wolves, and she shook her head at him, telling him not to care. Jon smiled back at her with his eyes bright, understanding, and swung her up and away into another wild whirling pass, not looking over at Robb anymore at all. Even the dance itself, moves and pattern, was slipping away in her head; they were just moving together for the sheer joy of it, leaping and turning around each other.

She didn’t want to stop at the end of the pass, and Jon didn’t either: she could feel the regret as he brought her down for a last time, his hands lingering on her waist a moment too long, wanting to lift her back up again, even though they were both completely out of breath, panting in gulps, and her hair really was a wreck, the braids all undone and tumbling loose around her, deeply indecorous. She took his hand to go back to the end of the line laughing at herself, at them both, and beamed over at him as they went, glowing all the way through with the fire of the dance. He looked back at her, his own face lit up, crinkling with happiness, and from one instant to the next she saw that same fire changing in him, his whole body gone taut and alert, hungry, and his hand tightened on hers a little.

She stopped with surprise. He’d frozen himself, staring at her, and then for a moment he was a man who’d walked into an unexpected danger, all the joy draining out of him, but in blind instinct she caught at it, caught at his hand with both of hers even as his grip started to loosen. They just stood there together, and he was gazing at her with a bewildered, almost disbelieving look coming into his face, the mirror of what she was feeling on her own. The next pair of dancers was darting sidelong looks at them as they went past to get back into the line, and she didn’t care; there were tears stinging in her eyes and her throat: a barred door suddenly swinging open, with sunlight and spring on the other side of it.

#

Robb wasn’t sure at first whether he’d taken too much drink the night before; he couldn’t make sense of what Jon was rambling on about. He couldn’t quite believe that Jon would really be asking him for a horse out of the Winterfell stables, as if he didn’t know he could take any one he liked any time he liked, but if that wasn’t what Jon was after, Robb didn’t know what he was asking for, and he was about to interrupt him bewildered when it suddenly dawned on him— “Are you asking me if you can marry Sansa?” he said, even more incredulous.

Jon turned red and began to stammer through what he seemed to think was making his case, but after only one more moment of surprise, Robb broke in on him at once. “What are you asking me for? I’m not trying to tell her what to do. Or is it that you haven’t managed to tell her that you want to marry her, and you want me to do it for you?” he added.

“What? No!” Jon said.

“I don’t know, if this is how you went on at her, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Robb said with a snort, and only grinned when Jon glared at him. “I thought you were asking if you could have that bay mare we got from Lord Harthorn!”

Jon put his hands over his face with a groan. “I didn’t know how to tell you!” he said, muffled.

“‘Robb, I’ve asked Sansa to marry me, and she’s said yes,’ that would’ve done!” Robb said. “Has she said yes?”

“I’d not be asking you if she hadn’t!” Jon said.

“Well, it’s all settled, then!” Robb said, smiling up at Jon helplessly. He hadn’t imagined such a match at all, but he was so happy for it he could burst: he’d understood for some time now, in sorrow, that Sansa had only been trying to make it easier for him and for Mother to bear, when she’d pretended to entertain one suit or another; that Joffrey had wounded her so badly that she’d never trust another man inside her guard again. But Jon—of course she could trust him, and of course the instant she’d given Jon a way into her heart, the heart of House Stark, he’d leapt for it.

Jon was beaming back at him, shining with his own happiness, and Robb rose to go round the desk and take him in his arms and pound his back and kiss his cheek; they held each other smiling, and then Robb straightened with a sudden dawning delight as he realized—he took Jon by the shoulder, grinning savagely, and started leading him to the door. “In fact, go tell her you’ll be married tomorrow!”

Jon gawked at him. “What? But—”

“Some of the guests haven’t left yet,” Robb said in gleeful vengeance, already thinking of just how much of a fuss he could arrange at short order. Surely Walda would manage something grand, if he begged her: a subtlety in the shape of all Winterfell, perhaps; and Vervain could dash off something. “We can’t pass up the chance to carry on the feasting a bit longer, can we? Make even more of a show of the strength of the North. It’s your duty to House Stark,” he added earnestly, as he guided Jon straight out the door and shut it in his dismayed face before he could manage to marshal any objections, and ran out the other way through the sitting room to go and rouse the whole household into action.

“Of course you didn’t want to neglect showing Sansa and Jon any honor,” Talisa said, in mild tones, from their seat at the high table, as the choir of sixty sweet-voiced boys and girls paraded in a circle throwing flowers—made of silk, since they hadn’t any real ones yet—upon the happy couple on the dais, which Robb had commanded put in the middle of the Great Hall, with all the other tables arranged around them.

“Of course not,” Robb said, in deep satisfaction, as the great fortress of pastry was carried out to them on a great plank by six men. When they cut into it with the sword that Jon was given, a full hundred starlings dyed in bright colors burst out into their faces squawking wildly—and went sailing around the hall in a panic, so all the guests began squawking too. The whole room descended into chaos, half of them diving beneath the tables to avoid having droppings land upon their fine clothes, and the drunker half applauding and cheering.

Robb had ordered a couple of pages to keep a cloak at the ready, and he and Talisa had ducked safely beneath it; as the pandemonium grew, he grinned out from under it in pure happiness in answer to the look Sansa gave him, even though it promised retribution.

“Oh, no,” Talisa said.

“Did one of them get you? It’s all right,” he said, still gleeful. “I’ll buy you a new gown.”

“It’s not my dress!” Talisa said. “The baby’s coming!”

“What?” He turned to her in horror. “Forget the cloak!” he ordered the pages. “Go get Maester Wornos, and Walda!” and beckoned to the guards standing unobtrusive a few steps behind the throne. “We’ll carry you upstairs—”

“No,” Talisa snarled at him through clenched teeth, all mildness gone; she was gripping tight onto his arm as she struggled up. “I mean, the baby’s coming,” and as she got out of the chair, a gush of waters came. She gave a strangled grunt, and in a panic he dived to a knee and got his hands beneath her as she was gasping; even as Walda was bustling over, anxious, saying, “Tali? Are you having pains?” she gave another cry and the baby came wet and slippery out in his hands.

“I’d say you deserved it, except Talisa didn’t,” Sansa said to him, as they all trooped back out together in their finery to take the boy to the godswood, a second trip in the same day. They could have waited until the next night, but the guests really were going now: Jaime and Brienne would be leaving for the south with the Lannister party in the morning, and Rickon and Lyanna returning to Bear Island with the Glovers and the Umbers; they hadn’t wanted to miss the naming. Talisa and the boy were both doing so well that Maester Wornos hadn’t any worries; she was even feeling well enough to come out with them.

“Oh, I deserved it!” Robb said. “Nine tapestries in silk thread, up and down the hall; giving a purse to have flattery sung at me! And I’m certain that between you and Jaime, every jongleur here has been paid to take that song up and down the whole realm. If I’d got a dragon inside the cake, it would’ve served you right.”

But he was too happy to truly be resentful. He came to the heart tree and stood waiting as all the others gathered around them: Mother on Arya’s arm, beside Jon and Bran in his chair, which Rickon had pushed easily out into the godswood; he and Lyanna were on his other side with Meera. Jaime and Brienne stood at the back. Nymeria was helping Talisa and scowling Yara off, who was smirking back at her, a hand on Rheon’s shoulder. Walda and Goneril were herding the rest of the pack of children: Wendel and Brynda had been promised they could come for this naming, along with the older three, so they’d been roused from their beds and were excited, and Brandon was loudly trying to boss the lot of them into a straight line, without much success. Robb grinned down at him, and looked to the shore as the wolves came trotting out of the trees having come the long way round; they sat up panting with their eyes gleaming in the torchlight.

Everyone fell quiet as Sansa raised her clear voice and said, “Who comes before the gods this night?”

Robb’s throat was tight as he looked around them all. The cold weather had truly broken; the icicles had been dripping all day for the whole week of feasting, and even though their breath was still frosting a little in the night air, it wasn’t bitter. The ice around the rim of the pond had begun to break up even just since the morning. For this one moment, winter was going, instead of coming, and his whole pack was gathered in the shelter of the walls of Winterfell. All of them safe together at last: the family he’d left home to save, the family he’d come home to build. All of them but one.

Robb swallowed a sharpness, something caught between joy and pain, and turning to face Sansa before the tree, he said softly, to her, to his family, to the gods, “I am Robb of House Stark, and I come to ask your blessing on my son—Eddard Stark.”