The whole world was white. As Jon trudged between the sweeping hills of snow, weaving between them in low places, he wondered if they were the barrows of the First Men or hills or the remnants of some village, or the snows had simply piled a hundred feet high, as in Old Nan's stories. He was so cold, so very cold, and his burden was too heavy. When he first found her this way, she felt like a bundle of sticks wrapped in paper, like nothing at all.
Sansa lay abed when he reached Harrenhal with the others. Davos and a few of Stannis' knights still followed him, and Leathers and Dolorous Edd and a handful of black brothers. When the wall fell Jon found the answer to the question Tormund Giantsbane asked of him. The answer was no- his sword could not cut cold.
Her red hair hung from the bundle as he carried her, like a bride to be bedded. The snow and frost crusted his hair and the stubble of his beard, and the wind had stopped stinging his face. He thought he could no longer put her down- the shroud was frozen to his cloak, and she was so cold, so cold. He took another step, fighting to find footing somewhere in the snows. Something soft moved under his boot, and he wondered if it was the hand of a dead man ready to burst from the snows and drag him down.
He couldn't stop. He had to find them.
When his ragged, freezing party reached the ancient seat of Harren the Black, there was no garrison to greet them or curse them or send them away. He thought the castle abandoned at first, but it was the red woman who found them, who brought Jon to the Hall of the Hundred Hearths. Snow had packed the chimneys, flowed in white mountains from the yawning mouths of the hearths, and seated in a great bundle of furs on the high seat upon the dais was a man Jon had never met, but knew by reputation.
Lord Baelish greeted him with a mad smile under snow white hair, buried in a bush beard more gray than black.
"Brandon," he rasped.
Jon motioned for the red woman to stand back as he moved closer. "You mistake me, Ser. I am Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. I travel with black brothers in need…"
"You can't have her," the lord rasped, "Not this time, Brandon. She's mine."
"Who?" said Jon, resting his gloved hand on Longclaw's hilt. "Have who?"
"Your betrothed, Stark," Baelish wheezed. "Cat is mine."
Jon blinked, shuddering. Cat?
It dawned on him. Catelyn Tully. His father's lady wife, long dead.
It was then he noticed the bundle slumped beside Baelish. The lord didn't moved as Jon approached, even as he ascended the dais and pulled the gauzy shroud from the dead woman seated beside him. She was fixed in death by the cold, her head bowed as if in prayer. It took him a moment to recognize her- a woman of sixteen years perhaps, or younger yet tall for her age. Her skin had drawn so tight to her skin in death that they looked to cut his finger if he touched her. Starvation had done for her, or so he thought, until he saw the rusty stain in her grey woolen gown, just beneath her breasts.
"I see you've met my lady wife," Baelish hissed.
"What did you do?" Jon demanded.
"It was a mercy," said Baelish. "She was so cold, so cold, so hungry. I feared for her. My Cat."
Jon tilted her head back, brushing the frozen strands of hair from her face. Father died in King's Landing, Robb and his mother at the Red Wedding. He dreamed of Bran but knew him dead, and Rickon was too small, too weak to survive the journey south. The Arya in Winterfell was an impostor, and dead in any case. His true sister was dead or gone, and he was not like to see her again in this world.
"Sansa," he said, shaking her. "Sansa."
"My lady wife sleeps," said Baelish, touching her cold blue hand.
Jon rounded on him, took him by the throat and dragged him to his feet. A blow to his face sent him sprawling on the stone floor, laughing.
"Go ahead, Stark," he said, "Give me another badge of honor."
Melisandre was behind him. She'd moved silently, and she didn't realized she'd crept up on him until he turned.
"She must burn," the red woman said.
Jon rounded on her. "No."
"She will rise…"
"No."
The red woman stood back. Jon stared at her.
"I should have killed you when I first said eyes on you, witch. Be gone from my sight."
She shrank from him, hiding her face under a red cowl. Jon called for his men.
He looked up. The sky was pure white, and growing darker by the moment. As they fled south, the sun seemed to shrink, to draw up in the heavens, not sinking below the horizon but abandoning them entirely. Sansa's body was heavy in his arms and his shoulders burned, but he took step after step. He had to find them.
When the others came Jon bade them carry Baelish from the hall. Harrenhal's godswood still stood, though the snow was as deep in places as a man was tall. Baelish laughed as they dragged him along. No one spoke until the ragged party reached the weirwood, its angry face staring madly at them all, twisted by rage and torment. Jon pushed Baelish to his knees in front of the tree, and put his hand on Longclaw.
He did not move.
"My Lord," Davos wheezed, clutching his cloak around his shoulders. "What do you mean to do?"
Jon flexed his sword hand around the hilt, then drew away from it.
"Leathers, your blades," he said.
Their provisions were meager. The knives had almost been abandoned- there was no need of skinning if there was no game to hunt. He motioned for them to stand Baelish on his feet and push him towards the tree, holding a hooked blade in his hand. Jon tore the cloaks and coats from the man himself, until he was standing naked in the snow and shivering, his legs struggling not to buckle as he clutched his pale hands over his shriveled manhood.
Jon saw what he meant by the badge of honor. He had a scar from groin to gullet, ugly and twisted.
"Geld me then," Baelish laughed, his voice shaking so hard from the cold he was barely intelligible. "Her maidenhead was mine."
Jon held the man by the throat as he opened his belly, and fished inside with his gloved hand. It was blessedly warm. Baelish clenched his teeth against the chattering and the gasps struggling in this throat as Jon held him, as his eyes widened from the shock.
"The spike," said Jon.
Leathers and Edd held him up by the arms as Jon slipped the hooked blade through the thick rope of his gut. He rammed the spike through it, and pounded into the tree with the butt of his knife. It was like sinking a nail into a block of iron, but it held, and a bloodied rope connected Baelish to the heart tree as he stood, blood pouring down his legs, mixing with piss and shit.
"Walk," Jon ordered.
Baelish stumbled, trembling, clutching at himself as if he could put it all back in. Jon held his arm and walked with him, forcing him to make the slow turns around the tree. He held his tongue at first, but after the second circuit he was screaming. Soon there was nothing left but a hollow in his belly and he fell against the tree, his tears of pain frozen in sheets on his cheeks.
"Mercy," Baelish pleaded, "Mercy, Lord Snow."
Jon looked at him. There was a brief break in his madness, like a sudden ray of sunlight in a squall.
"She should have been happy," he said.
"Aye," said Jon, and cut his throat.
Jon kept walking. The cold was in him, snaking up his legs. He held Sansa's slight, delicate body now because his hands were too cold to release her, walked with her because he'd forgotten what it was like to stop. It was like a dream now, like some distant thing. He thought he imagined his youth, her coldness, her "half-brother" and "bastard". She could call him bastard every hour, every minute for a thousand years if she would just wake up. He took another step.
They left Baelish' guts on the tree for the Old Gods, and the others burned him, that he might not rise again. Only Jon went back to the hall, to see his frozen sister. Only Jon and the red witch.
"Raise her," Jon said.
"I cannot," the red woman purred, swirling her cloak about herself. The cold had never touched her before, but even she swaddled herself in cloaks and blankets now, shivering.
"You raised me," he said.
"I cannot. The light is dying from me."
"You raised me. You and your fires. Give her all you have left, witch."
"There isn't enough."
She looked at him for a long moment, and turned and left him behind.
It was then he picked her up. Edd looked at him and said nothing. No more japes, no more false complaints.
"Where are you going, Snow?" said Davos, waiting outside the hall.
Jon stopped in front of him. "Go south with the others, my Lord. South as south can go. Perhaps there is still life somewhere."
"My Lord," Davos protested, "You cannot mean-"
"There is nothing for me there," said Jon. "All that matters I left in the north. I'm going home."
Davos looked at him and nodded, curtly, once. Jon looked at Edd.
"You have the watch."
Edd clapped his shoulder. Jon looked at him. There was nothing to be said.
He started walking. North was a long way. He carried Sansa over his shoulder at first, but that felt wrong, like she was baggage. He carried her in his arms instead, no matter how they hurt, until he felt nothing at all but a faint fire flickering in his breast, driving him forward. As he walked into the night without end with his sister's frozen shape in his arms, he fancied he saw others marching into it with him. He saw Robb stumbling forward, feeling the air with frozen hands as an unseeing wolf's eyes stared into the growing dark. He saw his lord father, trudging solemnly forward, his head tucked under one arm, the greatsword Ice slung on his back, marching to join the Kings of Winter in their crypts. He saw Bran and Rickon and the wolves, all headed north. He saw Arya, moving lightly through the snow, Needle in her first.
Theon Greyjoy stood before him, his face frozen in a mask of sorrow, his hands held before him, less some fingers. Jon walked past him, ignored his plea. The others lined up behind him, Mikken the smith and old Rodrik Cassel who taught Jon the sword, though his gaze was difficult to meet with a ragged stump atop his shoulders and his head gripped upside down, held by his magnificent whiskers. There was a great gathering in cold dark, and Jon laughed. They should hold a tourney. He saw Stannis with his redly flayed face standing beside the King, his guts stuffed rudely back in the boar's wound, and what must have been Lord Renly, his eyes as hollow as the shadowed wound in his chest. The Kingslayer gripped his own hand, and Cersei sat in the snow, clutching her dead-eyed children to her breast, weeping tracks of frozen blood.
Beside him a direwolf walked, somehow primly. Her throat was open and her fur was red, all over red.
"Hello, Lady," he said, his lips to cold to form the words properly.
Lady Catelyn walked next to him, wheezing through her cut throat, her ruined eyes heavy with judgment that melted into sadness as she lay eyes on Sansa's face, cold and hard and frozen now, like a doll. The cold preserved. She would be beautiful forever, he thought, as she deserved. Jon felt her hand on his cheek, her eyes full of alien mercy, but he passed her by. He could not stop.
Among the dead he saw a stranger. He thought her Arya at first, but she was too old, a woman grown. She wore a gown of solid grey wool, but she looked every inch the queen, and her crown was winter roses. Beside her walked a silvered prince in black armor. Their icy hands gripped each other tightly, and they looked on him in sadness. The prince made to speak, but no sound escaped his lips. A frozen tear fell from the woman's cheek, and she was gone.
He realized he was alone, after all.
"I know you're here," he said, his throat seizing up in pain. He laughed, realizing he was thirsty. "I know you're here!" he roared, louder.
His legs were pillars of ice. He could no longer move.
At last, he saw them. The white cold came, cold so intense he could see it, like a mist. It rolled up around him and they came on the snow, the touch of their feet so light they did not break the surface. Or so cold. He couldn't help but laugh. They would be beautiful, after all, wouldn't they? Cold blue eyes watched him, the coldest there could be.
He crouched and lay Sansa before him. She was so slight she lay on the snowbank like a bier. He fanned her hair out under her, and tucked her icy hands together over her wound, and she looked as if she might draw breath, but her lips were blue and cold and hard. He touched his lips to her forehead and felt nothing, and sat down in the snow.
They drew closer, standing around him in a circle.
"Whatever you want," he croaked. "You took Craster's boys, I know you make bargains."
He couldn't look at Sansa. "Not her, too."
They stood over him, weighing him. The cold was in him now, and he forgot what it was to be warm. He drew off his glove, and the one he'd packed underneath it. His hands were white, as white as snow.
He fell onto his side and lay beside her. The Others stood over them as he gripped her small hand in his, wedging his fingers between hers. He thought he should like to die, now. Perhaps one day the snows would leave, the night that never ends would end after all. Perhaps one day men would come to this barren place and name themselves First Men again, and they would find his bones beside Sansa's. He laughed at that. Would they think she was his lover?
Her fingers closed around his. When she turned to look at him her eyes were blue, not as before but full of light. She lifted his hand in hers, still so cold, and he moved closer, until their breath mingled, twin mists, and their lips touched, and it was sweet and cold.
"My king," she whispered.