Chapter 2
Jon never woke up cold.
Winterfell was like a human body. Warm water ran through it like blood through a Stark's veins: hot, fast, reckless. Wolfskin blankets made a man sure he always slept warm. The sound of the fire cracking in the hearth was welcome enough to delude a man into thinking that he lay in a grand castle in the Reach with gardens and flowers and the sounds of birds around him.
And yet, the first time Jon woke up in Winterfell after his return, his toes wouldn't move, frozen, rigid. His brow was covered with cold sweat. He felt as if his breath had been smacked out of him. His eyes were brown circles sunk deep in a hollow face.
Gripping for the chair near him, Jon forced himself out of bed. Back in Castle Black, he had thought that the cold wouldn't affect him once he reached Winterfell. Cold never bothered him; he was a Snow, after all. Wearing his pants and his shirt, he looked out of the tower onto the snow-covered treetops of the Wolfswood. If it had been anyone but himself, he would've blamed the cold on the winter. But he knew better than that. It had to do much less with the season, or the impending Long Night, and much more to do with the stab wounds on his torso, or Olly's haunting face, or Ser Alliser's defiant stare while they hanged.
"Your Grace," the voice came from outside the door, the voice of the Boltons' maester, Kedry. Jon still had to make sure that they looked at him when they addressed him as Your Grace, and not someone else.
He sighed, "Come in."
Maester Kedry sat him down and touched his brow, then his underarms. Jon did not have to look at the man to understand his hesitation to speak.
"May I . . . see the wounds, Your Grace?"
Jon stripped dutifully, not saying a word more than what was needed. He knew that the maester was asking just to sate his own curiosity, and not for any genuine purposes of treatment. He did not allow many people to see them, the crescent-like shapes that were the only reminder of the unnaturalness of his existence—save his sleep—however well they were known to his people: the wounds of the fabled Winter King who rose from the dead and hanged his murderers. Jon had hoped to keep it secret, but every man inside Winterfell knew.
The wounds were just as abnormal. They hadn't been treated, they hadn't festered. And it had been about a month since then, and they still hadn't healed or closed. He doubted a maester could help him as such. He saw Maester Kedry only at the urging of Ser Davos.
"Your health seems to be improving, Your Grace," Kedry bowed with every word, "The cold sweat has finally broken. As for your nights, I'll recommend essence of nightshade."
"I have no need for sleep aids," Jon snapped, snatching his shirt back from the chair where he had put it, "Medicine is a crutch."
"A disliked one, I'm sure, Your Grace," Kedry spoke humbly, and Jon could not help but notice the stark contrast between the bowing-and-scraping Boltons' fearful maester, and Maester Luwin, who was more advisor to, and an extension of, the Stark family than a servant, "however necessary."
"Thank you, Maester Kedry," Jon said, with firm finality in his tone. The man understood, and excused himself.
It was by seven in the morning that Jon met with Ser Davos at the Hall. The peasants had started trickling into Winter Town. Illiterate as they were, they somehow managed to predict the change in seasons more accurately than the archmaesters at the Citadel ever could. The first of them had come in with the white raven announcing the advent of winter. Jon looked out at his people worriedly. Every step to be taken now had to be weighed carefully. He had had no wish to denounce the fealty to the crown that his father had sworn. He had sworn to stay clear of the politics of the realm. The rage that he had felt when they had executed Lord Stark had abated long ago. Made him almost apathetic. But he knew his lords had joined him to take Winterfell, and for glory, and for self-rule, for independence of the North. His lords had certainly not taken up arms against the Crown to battle the White Walkers and the Long Night, and the imminent starvation that would come with it. Jon wasn't sure that his lords even understood the sort of threat they faced, even though he would say so every time he met them, to remind them of their real fight. He was leading his people into another battle where he would have to disregard politics and would have to do the right thing. But doing the right thing had got him killed before. And this time, there was no Red Woman to bring him back.
Because the right thing was Iron Throne's help. North's independence wasn't important. For what was independence without survival?
Ser Davos' face was as white as his beard when he greeted Jon, "Your Grace, I—"
Jon waited for him to finish, while Ser Davos struggled with words, something he was rather good and honest with, "Speak, Ser Davos. Have no fear."
Ser Davos gulped, "It be best if you come, Your Grace. To the kennels."
Jon frowned, but said not a word. As they walked out, he could feel Sansa's eyes on him. Out of the five, Sansa was the one he had been least acquainted with, save of the rants he would hear from Arya. From what he knew, Sansa had taken up after Lady Catelyn, from her looks to her manners and her speech, she was Catelyn Stark reincarnated. The games of time and need had played well on both of them. He had mentioned to her just how astonished he had been to see the Knights of the Vale swarming the battleground minutes before the extermination of their army. What he could not understand was that why Sansa had not told him about this option of the Vale at her disposal. Did she think he'd refuse? While he did not trust Lord Baelish, he would've only asked her to be cautious, not to reject his offer.
That's when he heard the howling. And barking.
Jon was instantly on alert. Barking, howling, birds flying here-and-there, they were all traditional premonitions of the shaking of the ground beneath them. Ser Davos looked at him, and shook his head, as if understanding his guess.
As they got near the kennels, the barking increased in volume. Followed by the strong stench of blood of the likes that Jon hadn't got close to since the Battle of the Bastards. That's where Ser Davos was probably taking him.
"The Princess Sansa," Ser Davos spoke with difficulty, "Your Grace . . . Ramsay Bolton was . . ."
Jon did not need any more explaining. As Jon peeped inside the dark kennels, he could see a chair, and a half-a-human sitting on it, covered with blood and his own guts and hair and the hounds, they were all over his parts. The biggest one was feeding on what looked like a liver.
Jon almost retched at the sight, "That is—?"
He looked shaken too, and Jon knew Ser Davos to be a man of the steeliest steel, "The last Bolton, Your Grace. Eaten by his own hounds. On the orders of Princess Sansa."
Jon did not bother to pass his judgment. Ramsay Bolton was a prisoner. His prisoner, under his protection. His first failure as a King. The dogs barking, it sounded like they were berating him, jeering him. It's not as if he had any use for Ramsay, he told himself, and that was true. He had got what he deserved. For killing Rickon. For torturing Sansa. For smothering Winterfell and its people with his flayed abominations.
And yet, he found little justification in Sansa's act of horror. There were a lot of people he had wanted dead in the cruellest ways imaginable: Joffrey Baratheon, Theon Greyjoy, Craster, Roose Bolton. But Maester Aemon and Mormont had taught him better.
Jon turned away, and walked back towards the broken First Keep, Ser Davos in tow after him, "No one can be expected to clean this before the dogs are finished. Cover the kennels out of sight, let no one near. When they are done with their meal, burn the rest."
As they made their way past the Winterfell gates which were in repairs, Jon's heart saddened to see the giant Wun Wun's lifeless body lying across the better part of the ground. His entire body was covered with arrows. The giant had been a noble one, a being of few words and more of action. He remembered their time in Hardhome, that moment of sheer wonder and awe, how those live skeletons had clung to him as he made his way out through the bay into the Shivering Sea. Jon looked away from him. Those at Hardhome, he couldn't save them. The men who joined him in battle, the wildlings, he had saved them only for them to be butchered at the hands of the Bolton army. The Night's Watch remained defenseless, with no people ranging out beyond the Wall. The horn of Joramun was still missing, vulnerable. There had been word of Sam that he had reached Horn Hill, his ancestral home, but none thereafter. He had made no difference.
"The lords of Winter seek your presence at breakfast, Your Grace," Ser Davos spoke, his voice flat.
"What for?"
"They mean to discuss strategy."
Jon frowned, "What strategy?"
"Best meet with them and hear what they have to say. Especially the old Lord Manderly. White Harbour is the only true city of trade in the North, Your Grace. Food, provisions, trade, they're all necessary for surviving the winter."
Jon nodded, "Then I will go at once," after some thought, "Send for Sansa too." He avoided the title of 'Princess' yet. He was a man of the Night's Watch, where each man got what he earned when he earned it. Sansa had won them the battle but she hadn't earned the title, and he sure as hell had not earned his.
Ser Davos did a head nod, "At once, Your Grace."
Jon walked through the castle silently, wondering where Ghost had gone off to. He hadn't seen him by the kennels, drawn to the scent of blood. He was about to turn off when he saw the stone foundations of the vault of the dead, the crypt. For no particular reason, he found himself walking into it, down and down by the stone staircase.
The burial place of the Winter Kings and lords of Winterfell was a dark and desolate place. The slippery walls, illuminated by the scant number of candles—Jon did not know the sorry person employed to light them every day—gave off a greenish hue. Warm water trickled through its surfaces. There was the sound of running water in the distance; Jon had never once been successful in getting to the source, however Arya had oft said that she knew. There was an underground hot lake beneath the underground stone vaults of Winterfell that charged both the lake in the Godswood and the water than ran through the crypt.
Arya. The last he'd heard of her was from Sansa herself. Arya had been seen by Brienne 10-20 miles off the Eyrie, deep in the Mountains of the Moon. What was to say that she survived after all, or perhaps lay face down somewhere below a cliff? From what he remembered of the lessons of maester Luwin that Robb told him of, the Mountains were filled with the savage hill tribes.
Or perhaps Arya was alive after all. But where? And doing what? Jon had lost too many loved ones. One more, one less, it was starting to make no difference.
He and Robb had often played around here when they were small, hiding behind the statues, under statues, in the likeness of them, while one tried to find the other. Dead did not worry the children, not unless they had an older person, most often Jory Cassel. Then Theon came along, small, bony, sad and lonely. He was nine-and-a-half, and he was ten-and-a-half, while Robb was days away from his tenth nameday. They took him in as boys would take in a new brother, like Bran or Rickon, and three boys were more fun than two.
Jon sighed, and the crypt sighed with him. The closest to the entrance of the crypt was supposedly the burial site of First Winter King, Brandon the Builder. The farther one went, the closer time got to his age.
Walking across as silently as he could, Jon came across the statue of Torrhen Stark, The-King-Who-Knelt and the first Lord of Winterfell, with a large direwolf curled around his feet. Walked and walked, contemplating, till he came upon the statue of his grandfather, Lord Rickard Stark, and his uncle, Brandon Stark. However that was not the pull he felt. It came from behind him, like a string tied in his chest, in him, being pulled by someone. He turned.
Lyanna Stark stood before him, her form immortalised in stone, her eyes looking upwards, as if towards the sun above her. Jon examined her closely. She had been young when she had died, or so they said. And she was said to have been the most beautiful maid in the North: wild and free-spirited. No wonder wars were fought for her.
Wild and free-spirited. It reminded Jon of Ygritte. Of her hair, kissed by fire. Of the hair down below. Wildness killed a girl, if history was any proof.
Jon placed a hand in her outstretched palm. A feather remained there, a token of affection. He took it in his grip and looked upwards, following her gaze, hoping to find some answers. His eyes only met the mossy green ceiling.
Promise me.
The whisper was too close to Jon's ear, sending a tingling sensation down his spine. Startled, he drew his hand away. Lyanna Stark remained standing, unmoving. Jon blinked, bemused. He had heard a woman's voice, a troubled voice, almost weeping. He tried to control his breath, his eyes darting from one direction to other. He was completely alone.
"The dead have many lessons to teach, Your Grace."
Jon stiffened, and turned around. The soft lilting voice could belong to only one man.
"Lord Baelish," he responded, glancing at him and back to Lyanna Stark, "what brings you here on a morning as pleasant as this?"
"Fascination, Your Grace," Baelish mused, folded hands, his eyes creeping over Lyanna's stone body, from face to bust to the skirt to feet, "A great beauty, your aunt was said to be, and with an old name. Of course, one wouldn't have to even look at her to know that. The two most fearsome warriors of the realm fought each other to death for her. History is a witness."
Jon sighed, "Aye."
"She had the Stark look," Baelish was now looking directly at Jon, who looked straight ahead at Lyanna's face, "And the Stark mind. I was Hoster Tully's ward when I first saw her, Your Grace. At the Lord Whent's tourney at Harrenhal, when Rhaegar Targaryen placed a crown of winter roses in Lyanna's lap, naming her the Queen of love and beauty."
Jon said nothing. He stared ahead resolutely.
"They speak," Baelish whispered very close to his ear, the warm breath and spittle almost impossible to ignore, "of her abduction. Her rape. Her murder."
Jon turned to face him finally, "Why are you speaking of this?"
"So why was it that when Prince Rhaegar put the garland in her lap with his lance, Lyanna Stark's face reddened into a smile that turned into shock after her brothers' outrage?"
Jon looked into Baelish's hollow eyes, looking for any indication of a lie. And then his anger turned into a sneer, and he turned away from him, smiling humourlessly. He knew the likes of this man, cheap and low-value and cowardly. He could sense Baelish's slightly surprised expression out of the corner of his left eye.
"The lords of Winter and the Vale await me at the breakfast table, my Lord. I hope we don't have to start without you."
With that, he placed the feather back in Lyanna's outstretched hand and swept out of there without waiting for Baelish, having wasted too much time at the crypts.
"Have you wondered ever," Baelish called out after his retreating figure, "how you look more Stark than any of the other five?"
Jon would not have stopped. Meaningless words did not matter to him. But courtesy called upon him. He would not walk away while an important lord spoke. It was disrespectful, especially of a king.
"With all due respect, my lord," Jon turned, "I have always been more concerned with my blade than with my looks."
Baelish smirked, and walked up closer to him, as if he'd finally tricked someone into giving him the prize, "Your Grace, that is the exact same thing Lyanna Stark said to Hoster Tully when he first met her."
The atmosphere of the pub was as solemn as that of a funeral. There was no music, only some chatter that verged on polite, and none of the raucousness of a typical inn. The rosy cheeked girl with the nice tits and the deep cleavage who served the ale was all in black. The pork chops were too salty, as if the cook had cried all over when he made the food. Food that tasted disgusting and was unworthy of going into anyone's gut. Outside the wooden door, Lannister men in red and golden armour stood in guard, noting everyone inside the pub. No one was allowed to leave, and no one was allowed to enter. A minute ago, two merry youths had turned up in the Street of Steel, completely drunk. The soldiers had run them through with their castle-forged swords.
The Queen Mother had, in the event of the King Tommen and Queen Margaery's death, and of the destruction of the Sept of Baelor on the Terrible Tuesday, declared an emergency in King's Landing.
All trade was to be suspended for a week of mourning. No birds were to chirp and glide the skies. The city gates had been shut, and the sails folded and the ships anchored at the harbour, with all men and women confined to the insides of the houses or wherever they happened to be at the time the soldiers declared the curfew. The only ones to roam the city were to be the City Watch and their Lannister horde.
Gendry had been in the pub three days ago, two days after the death of the Boy King when Lannister men had arrived and closed the door despite the weak protests of the old keeper. The old jeering men who were now "trapped" in there with its food and ale had grunted happily at the news and asked their mugs to be filled.
"It's rubbish, eh?" the barkeeper, balding and old and weak, cleaned the table in front of him, nearly wiping Gendry's arms resting on the table with the filthy old towel, "One month ago, she walks flashing her tits and cunt to the entire city, and now she's Queen."
Gendry smiled politely, but did not bother to respond back. Years had taught him never to respond to force, at least not by dissent.
"Seven days of mourning and curfew with these drunken sons of whores because of that Lannister bitch. Who is she to tell me who'll remain where?! This is my pub. I have the right to kick out anyone I like."
He almost laughed, and the old man, serious and pissed, looked at him as if he'd committed a felony.
"Oh, laugh all you like, boy. I've spent fifty years of my life listening to the laughs of drunken little lechers who told me to stuff my bull elsewhere. But you know what I think? I think they're all cowards. They ain't got no shit. They ain't got no guts to spit out what is right and what is not!"
"Oh, and you do?" Gendry couldn't resist.
"Oh, I do, boy. I do. The High Sparrow was right, the Seven bless his soul."
Gendry frowned. The High Sparrow and his Faith Militant were also against establishments like the ones that this man owned. For a repressive regime of three months, the Faith Militant had managed to terrorise the whole city with their violence. It had started with a "cleansing" operation. Whorehouses were closed and vandalized with graffiti and broken windows, with its whores and clients being dragged naked out in the open to be made to walk the "Walk of shame". Faggots were tied to horses by their cocks, dragged around till they tore off. Caskets of ale had flowed out in the street, pubs destroyed and drunkards kicked out of the pubs. Anyone who dared to lap up the spilled drink was sentenced to 10 lashes on the spot.
Despite the strict surveillance of the Faith Militant, pubs like the one Gendry was sitting in had sprung up. Not all Sparrows were so devoted and chaste enough. While the barkeeper had allegedly stopped serving alcohol during the short reign of the Faith Militant by devoting himself to the service of the High Sparrow and providing "shelter" for the members of the Militant in his inn, he'd promptly opened up the several hidden caskets of ale to be served when the city heard the destruction of the Sept of Baelor.
"What?" the old man, with his crinkly face and a politically astute mind, had remarked, when his customers had greedily, but suspiciously, looked up at the offer of ale after three months of dry season, "I loved the High Sparrow. You know it, folks! But I ain't the one stupid enough to mix business with love. They're all dead anyway. 5 coppers per mug."
Sure as the rising sun, the day after Terrible Tuesday saw the brutal extermination of the remaining few Faith Militant just as the barkeeper had predicted. Most of the members of the Faith Militant had died with their Sept. Lannister soldiers and the gold cloaks had allied themselves as they carried out public executions of the remaining Sparrows under the Queen's orders, mostly in combat, in numbers as high as five soldiers to one Sparrow. The ones who had surrendered had been hanged in the public squares.
People could watch from their homes, but no one was allowed to come out until "law and order was restored to the King's Landing", by royal decree, suspending freedom of movement and trade.
Gendry had himself come back to King's Landing after the death of King Joffrey, believing that now that the King was dead, no one would bother him with his parentage.
"Right about what?" He asked the old man, out of pure curiosity. The old man had been, over the course of three days, been a constant jab at his streamlined and ordered thoughts, with his ideas of a State and government and anarchy.
"Oh, the High Sparrow was a good man, lad," he kept the rag away and leaned in, speaking in a low voice, "Why should a couple of high-born pricks decide what I want to do? Why should they decide whether I want to serve tea or ale? What power do they have?"
Gendry rolled his eyes, "They're the kings."
He chuckled, "That they might be, boy. But they are the few. And we are the many."
Sorry, this one came up a bit delayed. Next one will be up in days, I promise.
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