His father's life-blood spilling out onto the granite of Winterfell's apartments, Ramsay stared down inarticulately at his body for a while, affected as he had not been by any other kill in his life. It seemed like a strange kind of disembodiment, though he felt no heed to the notion the difference in experience was on account of the Gods' fury at kinslaying. No.
It was a feeling of freedom he had never known before. The absolute freedom of action which had been denied to him, so that before he had always sought his freedom in pleasure.
Suddenly, the control of his fate that his father had exercised was gone. He was legitimised by order of the King. He was the Lord of the North by the King's decree. He was also standing in a room with his father's body, and there would be questions.
He looked again at the ethereal face of the Leech Lord, and started. Questions. Of Questions, before, there had been precious few. Ramsay knew, intensely, that he had to act quickly. There was something unique about this moment. It was, in its own way, pleasurable. It was like all of time, space, and experience hovered around his decisions. All that remained was the matter of...
Ramsay looked up. "Maester Wolkan?"
Wolkan looked down at Roose's body, stuttering without forming words.
"Maester Wolkan!" Ramsay straightened, eyes hardening to a glare. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword.
"M.. M.. M'lord?"
"Bring me Lady Walda and her son."
Wolkan's face turned chill, and he shied away from Ramsay, paling. "M'Lord, Lady Walda is resting with her son..."
"I said bring them to me," Ramsay barely more than whispered.
"M'lord, is it truly necessary..."
"Do you question me?"
"M'lord, the northern houses, they will not follow you, please, hear my advice, I..."
Ramsay's sword was halfway out of the hilt when he stopped drawing it. Wolkan was a simpering idiot, but he was right. If he killed his baby brother right now, all the houses of the North would not accept any explanation whatsoever except that he had murdered the boy. Give it a few years... Especially in the midst of a long winter, infants sometimes take sick and die.
He sheathed the sword. "It was poison that killed my father, was it not?"
"Absolutely, M'lord!"
"It will look like poison when his body is brought out, Maester Wolkan?"
"A... Absolutely, M'lord."
Ramsay's face twisted oddly, almost grotesque, and he looked again to his father's fallen figure. A rush of advice came back. By marrying you to Sansa, we have essentially betrayed the Lannisters... The Northern houses will only follow a rightful Stark... Or their legitimate heirs.
"Damn you, father! You take all the pleasure from a kill!" Ramsay turned away in disgust, and strode from the room, returning to his own apartments. The weight of the lordship pressed dangerously, not for responsibilities, but because the burst of freedom at once constrained. He had to secure power for himself, for himself, not for his father's schemes.
Taking his wine, he retreated from his apartments to the hot spring baths of Winterfell, mostly now abandoned and battered, but one pool still adequate for bathing. The pool where his Reek had been with him, until the unbelievable betrayal. That proved something: He could create a creature, he could forge a creature, use a creature, make a creature love him.
It would still betray him afterwards. Nothing was trustworthy. Certainly not the Houses of the North! If he could not make his Reek obey him, what kind of madness was it to expect that the Lordly Houses would follow the man he knew they would call behind his back Ramsay Snow, Kinslayer?
Breathing hard, he looked at the wall, and felt like he was seeing ghosts, far too close to the crypts of the Starks. "I have never yet been failed by fortune and my own intellect," he spoke aloud. "I will take the North! I will! I must!"
The walls, of course, did not answer. After a while, he rose from the bath, and mute servants taken from the Dreadfort serving to dry him. If only I had some way to make the Lords follow me...
In the coming days he saw their stares, their looks of contempt, their open doubt at the story of poison that laid his father low. Ramsay did what he could. He led the services, as a faithful and pious son, in the Godswood of Winterfell, he personally helped inter his father, the silent and accusing eyes of Roose and the odd tenderness with which he had to treat the body, compared with all the others, silently chilling his soul. He looked to the stars each night, and wondered.
On the fourth day, fate delivered him an opportunity in the form of the Smalljohn Umber, leading before him a wildling lass and a young boy. When he hastened outside into the courtyard of Winterfell at the news of the Smalljohn's arrival, Ramsay was transfixed. He could not believe it, this singular moment, so incredible as to make the doubter pious to the Gods.
He stared, for the Smalljohn brought with him Rickon Stark in fetters. A light, a brilliant sun, illuminated his heart at once. Ramsay saw the boy, felt like fate and fortune had endorsed his survival and his rule after all. Pausing three steps from the bottom of the stair, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, with the Lords who had followed Roose all about, and a weepy Wanda Frey in the corner with her infant, he felt at once he had what he had needed. A token to secure the loyalty of all the fighting men of the North.
Ramsay started down the steps, and all the eyes were on him. The eyes of Lords who for centuries had been loyal retainers of House Stark. Watching, waiting, wondering at what would come of his approach toward Rickon, the boy transfixed by the prospect of facing the terrifying bastard of Lord Roose Bolton. He met the boy's eyes...
And Ramsay Snow smiled, and reaching him, dropped to his knees. Outright gasps shook the room. Rickon's eyes widened in shock, and the Smalljohn outright recoiled from the scene.
"M'Lord Rickon Stark, Warden of the North, I beg you leave of forgiveness for my father's actions in betraying your noble and storied house. Though I am but a legitmised bastard and have no right to this place of Winterfell as my father might have proclaimed from the declaration of our King Tommen, I pray that you will forgive me for my father's actions in the death of your brother and the violation of the guest oath. I beg Your Lordship that my father is dead at the hands of our shared enemies. That you are young, and need counsel, counsel taught at the side of my father. And I desire for myself, not more than Dreadfort under your overlordship, and the lands of those traitors who would resist us."
"Please, M'Lord, take my confidence and my sword and know that as the rightful heir of Winterfell, I shall serve and protect you and insure that, as had always been intended by the House Lannister and House Baratheon in King's Landing, you are recognised as the rightful Lord of the North, that this terrible war be brought to a swift end, and that the traitors to King Tommen at the Wall who threaten the peace of the realms shall be brought to heel by my sword. Robb's aspirations brought ruin to the north, though he was a brave and loyal man. Let us, please, M'lord Rickon, have peace. Let me be your Regent, and end this dreadful bloodshed. Long Live House Stark!"
As he had spoken, the murmurs grew, and then the shouts. "Yes!"
"Surely!"
"For Lord Rickon and King Tommen!"
"The Gods have touched Lord Ramsay with wisdom upon the loss of his father! What a moment! What loyalty! Who could call this man a bastard after this day!?"
"Hail to Lord Rickon!"
"Hail, Hail! Hail to Lord Rickon!"
The chambers erupted into shouts and drawn swords were thrust into the sky.
Rickon stared at the kneeling Ramsay in shock, confusing, and he stutted, looking around the halls he had been forced to abandon as barely more than a babe, at a situation he scarcely comprehended. "I... I... Lord Ramsay, I... Let us have peace, Lord Ramsay."
The throne room erupted into cheers, and Ramsay rose, body feeling heady with a euphoria he had known before only with his Reek, and stood at Rickon's side. It works! Look at them! Not a one would raise a sword against me right now! It works! He led Rickon through his father's halls, led him to be feasted, introduced him to Walda and praised the grace of the young lad.
And as the feast was set out, excused himself to the privy, and pulled Maester Wolkan to the side. "A drought of Milk of the Poppy for the young Lord after he has had so many terrible adventures and hardships in the north, to help him sleep in halls where his entire family lays dead or in the hands of traitors, won't you, Maester Wolkan?"
"I, ... To help him sleep, or to help him sleep, M'lord?"
"He should have a long life, Maester, but if you value your's, it will be unconcerned with affairs of state."
"...M'lord."
