Promises to Keep

by Sera dy Relandrant

"But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep." AU. What if Lyanna had survived childbirth and married Robert? What would happen to Jon? What if Rhaego had survived? What if Melisandre was right?

3. Guilt

In her dream, she was back in the crypts.

She had no torch, no lantern to light her way and yet the shadows lurked and sprang, the living children of dark and flickering light. Those were the shadows of giants, of the dead kings of winter. Stone made flesh, stirring in the darkness.

The darkness, it was everywhere, it was everything. It swirled about her, it wrapped itself about her body like a maiden's cloak, about her throat like the hands of the men who would come for her children while she slept. It snagged about her skirts and she stumbled as she tried to flee and fell to her knees like an animal to be butchered. There was life in her yet, she could have risen, she could have run as she had always tried to run from her guilt, but this time was different, this time there was the child in her arms.

Grey eyes or blue, brown hair or black, boy or girl, what did it matter? It was her child.

She could hear the sigh of stone upon stone, as the vaults opened one by one. She heard the steel scrape as they unsheathed their swords and she knew what they came for, her child's blood to pay for her father's. She heard the words, spoken in the tongue of the First Men. Kinslayer. Murderor. Traitor.

No. No. No, it wasn't me! she wanted to scream, to beg and plead and offer excuses, to lie. I am not one of you. I am a woman and this is not a child of Winterfell, not your blood. I was never a Stark and neither is this one. I took the dragon, I took the stag, I wore their colours and gave them their heirs. Please. Please. Please! And relentlessly, the shadows marched onwards.

"Little one."

She knew that voice. "Father!" she screamed, lurching to her feet. "Father, I'm here! Father!" He would save her, he would kiss her and hold her close and take her somewhere warm and safe. He knows me. He knows me and he still loves me.

"Sweetling. Springchild." She heard the sigh in his voice and saw the circle of light cast by his dancing lantern before she saw him. He loves me. The shadows melted, the shadows fled and she picked up her skirts and ran towards him.

And then he was before her, in grey velvet and white satin with the silver direwolves racing across his cloak. On his white head was a crown, not the twisted circlet of bronze the old Kings of the North had once worn, but a chaplet of roses. Roses as blue as the eyes of the White Walkers.

"Here I am, little one. Come, won't you give your father a kiss?"

As he stepped towards her the petals dripped off from his crown, like rain from the castle eaves and a draught blew them towards her. They brushed her cheeks and tangled in her long hair, as hot as a branding iron and as black as scorched earth. And his skin dripped from his face, like wax dripping from a tallow candle, like the skin of a man roasting in his armour.

"Springchild, won't you give your father a kiss?"

Flesh sloughed off the slender, long-fingered hands that held the lantern and left the bones bare, as white as a virgin-bride's gown. She could smell burnt cloth, burnt hair, burnt flesh.

His cloak caught first, and then his surcoat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes. Next he would start to cook. The steel of his breastplate turned cherry-red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped down into the fire. I stood at the foot of the Iron Throne in my white armor and white cloak, filling my head with thoughts of Cersei...

"Sweetling, won't you give your father a kiss?" She heard the sigh in his voice as it faded and the draught caught and swirled the ashes through the air.

Sobbing, she fell to her feet and held her child closer to her. It was quiet, so very quiet. Oh my darling, she thought. All I do, I do for you. She looked down and then she could only scream for she held only ribbons of flayed skin and a face that was a gaping wound of blood and ashes.

Kinslayer. Murderor. Traitor.

They were upon her now, the dead kings who cast the shadows of giants. They had done what had needed to be done and now they only circled her, for she was their daughter, blood of their blood. Not so, the child, who was the blood of the dragon, the blood of the stag. He is not one of us.

"Take me!" she screamed, knowing that they would not touch her. "Take me and be done with it!"

She was still screaming when Robert slapped her and she awoke wide-eyed and gasping, the taste of ashes lingering in her mouth. He loomed over her, more a giant than a man, and for a moment she thought she was still trapped.

"You wouldn't wake up," he said awkwardly and brushed her cheek gently. "You were screaming and I didn't know what else to do..." He trailed off and looked down helplessly at his large hands.

She felt like she was choking. "Air," she gasped. "Open the windows."

He threw them wide open and the cold air filled the room. A thin stripe of sunshine fell over the bed and she lay back quietly against the pillows, trying to concentrate. She could not, the room was strange, the bed unfamiliar and the man... what had he heard?

"You do remember where we are, don't you?"

She thought he meant it as a reproach, for screaming out, and her hackles rose. "If you'd been through half of what I'd been through you wouldn't be quite so quick to condemn me for crying out," she snapped, reaching for her robe. "I felt I was chained there once again and-"

"I only meant-" he began awkwardly and she'd had enough.

"You only meant what, Robert? What?" With two long strides she'd reached her trunk and pulled out a cloak and a serviceable gown. "That I'm weak, that you're tired of me making scenes? Well, my lord, I'm but a woman, a fool woman as you've often said and-"

"It wasn't that. It's only that when someone gets a concussion or something we always ask them what their name is first and then whether they remember where they are. You looked like you could manage the first question so I asked you the second." He shrugged.

"Do I look like I have a concussion?"

"Yes."

She did not deign to reply. The gown was grey and white and that made her angry. Those were the colours of House Stark. What had she to do with House Stark? She was a wife, a mother and she had nothing to do with the house of her fathers and her brothers. Her children would never be Starks.

"So do you remember where we are?"

He was clearly in a persistent mood. "Castle Cerwyn," she snapped. They had reached the castle well after dusk and though Winterfell was but a half-day's ride ahead there was nothing to be done but stop at the castle for the night. Lord Medger Cerwyn, who had plucked summer strawberries with her when she was a little girl, had feasted them richly and Daeryssa had danced with his fourteen-year-old heir, a comely lad named Cley. Robert and she had shared a bed for the night.

"It's early yet, Lyanna - can't be more than the fourth bell. Where are you going?"

She stepped behind a carved screen to change into the gown and cloak. "On an adventure," she said absently, without thinking.

"It's dark out, Lya. Where are you going?"

"Out on an adventure, Ben."

It was slow work, dressing by herself. She was used to the services of her maids. What a fine lady I've become, she thought contemptuously. I never had my own maid before I was seventeen though Catelyn and Lysa laughed at me for it. "Did I scream?"

"You woke me up. That's a record all on it's own. The last time one of my bedmates woke me up, it was Ned and there were hillmen setting fire to our tent. We were fifteen, sixteen thereabouts and we killed about ten men between us, half-naked as we were..." There was relish in his voice. "Hillmen, there's no unity in them, all you need to do is cut a swathe through them and-"

"I have no interest in cutting a swathe through hillmen. What did I scream?"

He thought about it. "Father, it sounded like. And 'please'."

She breathed more easily.

"It's snowing." There was awe in his voice. "Summer snows, bless me. What is this place like in winter?"

The cold made her shiver and that disgusted her. I used to suck on icicles and walk barefoot on the snow for a dare, with ne'er a shiver. Winter snows, and this is only summer. What has become of me? She threw on her scarlet cloak, the colour as deep and rich as that which Melisandre of Asshai wore. It was fastened by a sapphire rose, nestled in a bed of diamond leaves, and that irritated her as well. She loathed roses. She pushed the hood of her cloak over her head so that she would not need to brush her hair. Little Red Riding Hood. The thought made her smile, it was a bedtale Father had told her, not Old Nan, but Father.

And Little Red Riding Hood ended up in the wolf's stomach didn't she?

When she emerged from the screen, Robert was leaning on the windowsill in doublet, breeches and cloak. "Go back to bed," she snapped, as though he was her son instead of her husband. He wore riding boots, she noticed, as she hunted for her own boots. Without looking at her, he threw them to her.

"It's pretty isn't it? All this snow?" he said dreamily. "I feel like a singer."

She slipped them on and knotted the laces. "Sweet. Now go back to bed."

"One does not command the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms."

"Unless one is the Lady." She pushed open the door and like a puppy, he trailed at her heels.

"I told you I felt like a singer. I want to go on an adventure with you. Please? Pretty please?"

"Well you're not." She couldn't help laughing though as she glanced at his face. He reminded her of Ben. "It's too cold for your thin southron blood, my love. There be wolves in the woods and mayhap they won't take to a southman's smell."

"You're the one who's shivering," he pointed out.

"Shivering from joy."

"Isn't it crying from joy?"

"Same difference."

They'd left the antechamber. It was Ser Jaime who stood attendance at their door. If the sight of them puzzled him, he hid it well. "Robert. My lady. Where to?"

"Adventuring," Robert told him brightly. "We're leaving to hunt snarks and grumkins and rescue a fair damsel or two perhaps."

"We are not." It was bad enough that Robert had not drunk himself into a stupor last night. She would not have Jaime Lannister clinging like slime to the back of her shoes. "I am. And he is. But not you, you're going to stand guard at the door like a good little boy and when Jon comes just tell him we've overslept."

"I have my duties to my liege lord," Jaime said piously. "I would consider it the most heinous of sins if I were to betray them."

She blinked at him. "Kingslayer," she said, drawing the word out. What is a kingslayer to a kinslayer?

He shrugged. "That was personal. This is just business."

"We should take him along," Robert said suddenly. "He'll tell Jon if we don't."

This time, both she and Jaime stared incredulously at him. "How old are you?" she finally squawked. "He'll tell Jon if we don't... honestly, Alcuin has more spunk than you and he's three."

He smiled at her. "You remind me of me and I remind myself of Ned." Before she had time to register what he'd said, he added, "I mean when we were little, I used to sneak out to go adventuring in the dead of the night and Ned would follow to keep me in line... and he'd always mention Jon if I wanted to do anything too rash, like jumping out of the Moon Door, say."

I'm not rash, she wanted to say before she realized that she had been on the point of it. She had nothing to protect herself with, Jaime and perhaps Robert might be of assistance. The world belongs to the oafs. "Come then," she snapped, sweeping down the stairs. She knew Castle Cerwyn almost as well as she knew Winterfell and it was easy to sneak out and reach the stables at the early hour unnoticed. She passed an alcove, screened from view by a stout pillar and stopped suddenly.

"What?" Robert wanted to know.

She slipped behind the pillar, just barely. She wondered how two people had once fit in there. We were so young then, so slender. "I kissed Medger's nephew here when I was ten," she only whispered. "Denys was twelve or thirteen, comely. He would play on the lute and I on the high harp, Father and Lord Cley used to say we made such a pretty pair... but of course nothing came of it, Father wanted a greater marriage for me, a southron alliance for his only daughter."

"Should I be jealous?" He was teasing her.

"Denys fell at Stoney Sept, at the Battle of the Bells. He was not yet twenty." His blood is on your hands, his and many a good man's and all for what? A wretched girl and her whelp? She stepped out from behind the pillar.

He took her arm and let her lead him forwards. Presently he said, "There was another Denys who fell that day - Connington slew him. Jon's nephew and heir, they used to call him the darling of the Vale. He was fostered with us, a year older than me. None of us could hold a candle to him on the tilting field and he was as comely as your Denys, I suppose. Chivalrious, that's the word, he was brimming with it - not Ned's kind, more the courtly kind, I'd say. Pretty to look at, charming to talk to... he was in love with this Waynwood girl, as darling as he was. She'd already set to embroidering her wedding gown when Jon called his banners."

His voice was not quite steady as he said, "I was wounded and hiding in Stoney Sept, you know but I managed to cut through six men that day... though Ned won the day for me, in truth. Jon was not there but the least I could do for him was write to him and stand vigil over Denys that night. And all the while I was wondering what I'd done wrong, what I should have done, if I'd only just..."

"It's not your fault." How can he think it his fault?

"I know." He looked steadily down at her. "I still felt guilty but then... then I fought it out, got drunk on battle and beer and women, gods all the whores at the Peach, I think... I made my peace. You never did."

She lowered her eyes. "I was the victim."

"And you still feel guilty for your father and your brother and all yours Denys' don't you?" He grasped her chin and forced her to look up. "They did what they had to and you did what you had to. That's the way of the world, Lyanna. There's no room for your guilt."

"I was the victim," she repeated dully, as though by saying it over again and again she could make it true. I was the sinner.

He said nothing and indeed, he did not speak until after they had mounted and left the castle through a side-gate she knew. Jaime had thrown a copper to the ragged boy who'd curled up next to the horses who'd gawked at them, so she knew they would be safe from pursuers for a time. A ruddy knife slashed through the indigo sky and painted stars nestled close to a fading crescent moon. The cat's eye hour, Brandon used to call it. Listen hard, little daughter, Father would tell her when he took her out riding at such an early hour. This is the time the fairies slip out of the snowdrops, after the night's dancing. Listen hard and you might hear the tinkling of their bells as they drive back to their weirwood-hollow homes, in bells of silver. Listen hard and you might hear the tinkle of their laughter and then you'll know spring is on the way.

I've heard it, Father, she'd tell him, truly believeing that she had. I've heard it.

So you have, sweet little one, he'd say and stroke her hair, so fine and dark and beautiful even when she was a little girl. If there was ever a one made for laughter and for fairies, it was you. She'd been a pretty girl, there was no dearth of men to tell her that - men who wished to curry favour and boys who wanted to steal a kiss. But there were many girls as slender and sweet and pretty as she and Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar Targaryen were both used to them when they first saw her. What had made her stand out? Her spirit, her laughter? If she'd known she would have gladly played the bluestocking like Lord Medger's daughter, the old maid Alais who was her age.

I laughed without knowing that I courted tears, she thought as Robert raced with Jaime. She followed sedately behind on her white palfrey, though it was not her wont. The trees here were as dear and familiar to her as friends. She lingered over them and thought of her girlhood, when her smile had been sweeter than summerwine and her laughter clearer than the tinkling of fairy bells. The old wives used to tell me that fine teeth were the ruin of fine eyes, that a girl who liked to laugh was on the high road to weeping. I should have listened to them.

But this was her land. This was the North where she had once belonged. They could not take this from her, the men who'd wooed her with smiles and swords. Nobody could. She smiled suddenly and there was no bitterness in that smile. This was the home of her fathers.

Robert whistled at her, the way he whistled at the pretty serving-girls and before she knew it she was racing him. His courser, as black as his hair, loped at the heels of her snow-white palfrey and both churned up snow. She was laughing by the time she'd reached the lightning-struck tree on the hill. Her cheeks were as red as the hood that had slipped off and there were snowflakes melting in her hair. She caught the look he threw at her and she knew that he thought her pretty and her smile was the brighter for it.

He drew rein and pouted. "I let you win."

She stuck out her tongue at him. "Did not."

Jaime drew smoothly up, his stallion as golden as the armour he donned at tourneys. "Well-ridden, my lady."

"For a lady?" she asked dryly.

"For anyone," Robert said defensively. "Race you again?"

She shook her head. "I'm out of breath," she said honestly. "Any maester worth his chain would weep if he caught me racing in my condition." It was bad enough that Maester Colemon had twittered about her riding at all, even Jon had been trying to persuade her to ride in the wheelhouse for the duration of her pregnancy. The fact that she pointed out that Dothraki women rode till nearly the moment of the birth and that their children were not a whit the worse for it had not helped matters.

One woman out of four dies in childbirth among the Dothraki, Colemon had told her gravely. What a lesser woman might risk is not right of the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. You would never permit your royal husband or your children to incur such risks - why must you tempt fate so?

Because they have their whole lives before them. Because a king and his heirs are worth more than a queen, she'd said lightly. Because I am a husk of a woman who has given six children to the realm and has nothing left to give. Surely I might be permitted to run my own risks now? The child will not come to any harm and that is all that matters.

She slipped out of the saddle and sat down on the stump of the tree. It had once towered on the hill, she remembered, a solitary oak as gracious as a mother. Lightning had struck it, perhaps many years before, and now the blackened stump was all that remained.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away, she thought, recollecting a Valyrian ode. One day they will write down the sum of my deeds in their great books. They will remember the wife and the mother, but they will never think of the girl I once was.

She would not think of it. She bent down and scooped a handful of snow. A shape, she remembered it through years of practice. Her fingers were light and deft and the snow was not cold at all though she wore no gloves. Her body remembered it.

"What are you doing?" Jaime asked curiously. The summer snows he'd already seen at Castle Cerwyn were deeper than the deepest winter snows that ever fell on the westlands and Casterly Rock. He would not understand.

"Wait," she only said, packing mud around her baby snowball. Robert was grinning - he'd been fostered at the high peaks of the Vale, he was used to snow fights. Jaime continued to look down at her from his horse, looking very elegantly and politely puzzled with one eyebrow arched quizzically. She wondered if he practiced the look in the mirror - she'd once tried to mastered the art but she'd given it up as hopeless. She'd almost gotten the hang of it at the Tower of Joy though - there really was nothing much to do but pace the floors and plan a daring escape.

It wasn't quite perfect but it would do. Father had built the most perfect snowballs but then Ben had caught the hang of it - he was better at it than Ned and Brandon and her. "Kingslayer," she said. "Close your eyes."

He was such a darling. He closed his eyes and she slammed the snowball at him with all her strength. He yelped and his eyes sprang wide open. The look on his face as he touched the mud-flecked snow on his cheek was priceless. Robert and she were both laughing by the time he'd bent down and flung a badly-shaped snowball at them. She ducked easily and the snow splattered Robert's cloak.

"Not like that," she said, beckoning to him. "Here, this way. You scoop it up so..." She shifted to let him sit next to her on the stump. Gently, she took his fingers and helped him shape it properly. "It'd be better if you took off your gloves, you'll be defter-"

He threw her a withering look. "Oh yes. And freeze to death, I suppose."

"Thin southron blood," Robert murmured, though Storm's End was further south than Casterly Rock. "We'll have our hands full teaching the children to make snowballs, won't we Lyanna?"

"That and another things," she said absently. She had plans for the children.

He tapped her head. "Stop plotting. You look like you're about to burst."

Jaime threw a beautiful snowball and it hit the side of her head. Hard. All that experience on the jousting field had given him an innate skill at throwing things hard. "Very good," she said, slipping on the hood of her cloak. "Now go away." Looking slightly petulant, he left them. She was pleased to see that he was putting his time to better things than sitting on his horse and looking pretty - he had begun to make another snowball. A most apt pupil.

"Margaery's a bore," Robert said presently.

"Bedded her yet?" She'd thought that Olenna Redwyne would wish to whet Robert's appetite by dangling Margaery before him.

He nodded. "Three nights after the tourney, I think. That was the first time. A week later she came again and from then on-" he grimaced. "Now, the way she guards her cunt, you'd think she had all the gold of Highgarden between her legs."

She laughed. "Let me guess - she asked you for something and you refused?"

He looked puzzled. "No, she didn't. Curious, even I expected her to ask after you warned me... what do you make of that, clever wife?"

"They're hoping to market a mistress," she said shrewdly. "Aegon the Fourth had seven or eight... a man of huge appetites like yourself." Margaery's fourteen and there's a trace of my face and colouring in hers. Interesting. She had no complaints with whores and baseborn children but a mistress and great bastards were different. Olenna had miscalculated this time though. Robert, thicker-than-custard Robert, didn't want a mistress. He wanted a smiling face and a willing cunt, a jug of beer and a roll in the hay.

"Mistress..." He grinned at her. "Don't look so sour. What are you worrying about?"

"I was thinking about the Blackfyres-"

He waved his hand. "And spare me the saga. I'd be mad to put trueborn names on my baseborn sons when you've been kind enough to give me so many of them."

"Or stupid. You do stupid very well." She pursed her lips. There was the matter of his bastards to be considered. She had never thought of that - the girls would not be much trouble but the boys... Gendry was the oldest, a few months younger than Bran. Alaric was a few months younger than eight-year-old Edric, Delena Florent's son and the highest-born of Robert's by-blows. There was no telling what a man might do and if he ever sired a son on a pretty young thing backed by a noble house...

They must be sent to the Wall, she thought grimly. All of them.

There was something nagging at her, something she had to clear. "They did what they had to and you did what you had to," she said slowly and looked at Robert. "What did you mean?"

"Well I meant that your brother Brandon went to King's Landing and demanded that-"

"Yes, I know that part," she said, annoyed. "You don't have to be as dense as you look, you know. You did what you had to. What do you mean by that? I was abducted and I was raped, I hardly had a say in that."

He slipped off his gloves took her hands in his and stroked them, looking slightly embarrassed. It was only when he touched her that she realized how cold her hands were. "You loved him, didn't you?" he blurted out suddenly. Before she could open her mouth, he put his hand up to it. "Hush, you did, I know. I saw the way you looked at him-"

"The way half the women in the kingdom looked at him! Even his own mother, Jaime says, there were some Targaryens who took their own children to their beds-"

"So you did love him." He looked pleased with himself.

She began to splutter in outrage. "He was a prince, damn you! He was a handsome prince who sang sad songs, of course I loved him in the same way everyone loved him, I didn't know he was a monster-"

"And wrote to him for over a year. And..." He stroked her cheek but suddenly she wished he would slap her. There was a look in his eyes that she did not like - or was she just imagining it? This is Robert, this is only Robert. If he knew, he wouldn't tell me, he'd come and smash my chest in with a warhammer. "Won't you ask me who told me, dear heart?"

The numbness spread from the tips of the fingers, still in his hands, to her cheek which he was stroking so tenderly. "Who?"

He stood up. "Think on it," he said mildly. "You're so clever, my lady. I know I'll never hold a candle to you and perhaps it's for the best that I don't try... you were made for the thrones and I was made for the swords. But remember this, my lady, I'm not near so dense as I look and you're not half so clever as you look." He offered her arm and she stood up, as though in a dream. Or a nightmare. "Think on it and puzzle out how much I know and how much you wouldn't want me to know."

The ride back was the longest one she'd ever ridden with Robert.

000

Jon was not happy.

If this is the way I sound when I scold Bran then it's a mercy he hasn't killed me as yet, she thought, listening patiently as he berated her. Robert had drifted off and she had had to stay and endure Jon's sulks. It was hard to listen with a solemn face, the air was cold and clear and the sunlight sparkled on the snow. She longed to race ahead, past the surging human river, ahead of the silver-and-gold cavalcade. But as queen, she rode demurely at the Lord Hand's side, followed by her daughters and ladies-in-waiting and two knights of the Kingsguard.

"You are not listening."

She laughed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm sorry, truly I am. It's just... just the air, I think. The trees. The cold. Being home again. It, what's that phrase? Oh yes, it stirs the blood."

"And addles the brains, I take it. What possessed you and Robert to ride out with the Kingslayer of all men?"

"The Lion of Lannister," she reminded him. "You said they were our allies, didn't you? That I ought to wed my daughters to them, cherish them and draw them close to my bosom."

"Draw your friends close, your enemies closer." His eyes narrowed. "Of all reckless endeavours-"

"It was a bit of fun," she said impatiently. "Let me be."

To each his own, his face said but he did not pursue the matter. Not like me, she thought ruefully. I nag and nag the children until they run screaming from me. But Jon must have more experience with unruly brats - he raised Robert, didn't he? "I had a strange letter from Stannis," he said presently. He lowered his voice. "He suspects Cersei of infidelity."

"Cersei's a whore," she said sweetly. "Why'd he send her away from Dragonstone if he suspected her at all? I'd keep her under lock and key in some tall tower if I was a man like Stannis and she was my wife."

"He suspects her of passing off her bastards as his trueborn children."

"Little Lyanna," she said shortly. "She's Robert's - you've only to look at her face to know who the father is."

"She has the Baratheon look," Jon said mildly. "Not Robert's look alone - Renly's as well. The Baratheon colouring like Stannis, if not the face. She could as easily be a cousin to your daughters as their half-sister."

"Stannis is ugly," she said, making a face. "Lya's as beautiful as any of Robert's girls - Mya, Bella, Ioana, Daeryssa, Dagna..." Stannis had been blessed with four comely children - more than he'd ever been able to make if Cersei had stayed faithful to him. Why should he complain?

"Strangely enough, Stannis suspects that the only one of Cersei's children that he has fathered is Lyanna."

She raised an eyebrow. "Tommem, Myrcella, Tygett - they all take after their mother. Who does he think fathered them?"

Jon leaned towards her, so close that their cheeks almost brushed. "Jaime," he whispered into her ear.

She burst out laughing. "J- gods, how-how perverse." She was almost angry. "He accuses her of-"

"Incest, yes." Jon's voice was grave.

"That's absurd," she said flatly. "Incest - oh gods, that's simply revolting, I can't believe it, I won't believe it- they look like their mother so naturally they must be their uncle's children?" She flushed. "Disgusting - I always had a low opinion of the man but now..." She shook her head. "You can't honestly believe that?"

He stared off into the distance. "I have looked into the matter," he said gravely. "Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue was a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair who died in infancy. Thirty years before that a Lannister took a Baratheon maid to wife. She gave him three daughters and a son, each black-haired."

"He would seek to find their father by the colour of their hair?" She was incredulous. "Children are not ink and paper. Three golden-haired children and the little raven - and that proves that Jaime fathered the first three and Stannis the last? No." She shook her head decisively. "Four of Ned five children have the Tully look, red hair and blue eyes. Am I to accuse Edmure Tully of bedding his sister? Your Robert has the Arryn look but his sister Daella, she lived for almost a year and she was a little Tully."

"You mean to say that these things cannot be read in books?"

"Certainly not," she snapped. "My children all look like Robert but if they had the Stark colouring would Stannis name me an adulteress and a traitor to the realm? The man is crazed. He is too proud to admit that his seed is weak and so his trueborn children take after their mother while the bastard though she has the Baratheon colouring is Robert's."

"So you think that Robert's seed is strong and that Stannis' is weak?"

"Yes."

"They are brothers."

"By law. There were never men less like brothers than Robert and Stannis. Unless you consider Renly and Stannis." She paused. "You can't mean to say that you believe Stannis' lies?"

"I do not disbelieve it," he hedged. "Stannis is cleverer than you give him credit for."

"The man is honourable and just to a fault. Cleverer than Robert, I'll grant you, but blinded by his pride."

"Does it never strike you as strange, how well Cersei loves her brother?"

Once upon a time it had... but she put it from her mind. "My brother Brandon and I were just as close," she said shortly. "Perhaps closer." She did not like to think of Brandon and how close they had once been. Perhaps there is the tiniest sliver of truth lurking in the matter, she thought. If Brandon and I kissed... Cersei and Jaime would they be bolder? Would they dare? Wildfire and wildfire... but no. No, they wouldn't. "If Stannis wants himself a bastard tell him to look closer to his sweet Lya."

"How is it that you are so sure that Lyanna is Robert's daughter?"

"Robert told me," she said bluntly. "And Cersei... naming the child after me, what else could it be? It was a mockery."

"Indeed. And how pray would Robert know? About the time she was conceived, Stannis and Robert were both at the Red Keep. And Stannis is not negligent when it comes to doing his duty by his lovely lady wife's bed. Do you not think that it would be to Cersei's advantage to tell Robert that the child she carried was his? Robert would have been delighted to trump his less-loved brother over. Would he not give Cersei anything she wanted..."

"Pirates' Swoop," she said slowly. "The seat of the red branch of House Celtigar." Those were plum lands in the storm kingdoms and by rights of blood it should have passed to the nearest relatives of the red Celtigars, the Velaryons but Robert had granted it to Cersei's uncle, Lord Kevan. Lesser lands, but all rich and fertile, had been issued by royal writ so that all of Lord Tywin's brothers were now high lords in their own rights. She had thought it madness then but now she saw the advantage of it - these new-made lords did not swear fealty to Storm's End, unlike other lords of the stormlands. They were a Lannister garrison unto themselves.

"It hardly matters who the father is," Jon said curtly. "She has two brothers to inherit and Stannis considers her his. Let that be enough."

She raised an eyebrow. "Stannis' honour does not concern you?" This was not the Jon she knew. "Wouldn't it be a shame not to inform the man?"

He snorted. "Honour, yes - you believe the eldest three are Stannis' and he believes that they are not. You believe that Lyanna is Robert's and he believes that she is his. I hardly know what to make of the matter and even if I did I would not care to take steps. He is only the Lord of Dragonstone-"

"Prince," she reminded him. Cersei had coaxed Robert into permitting his brother to style himself 'Prince of Dragonstone' after Lyanna had been born. Now she was 'Princess Cersei' - a step up from 'Lady Cersei'.

"Lords, princes what does it matter? Let Cersei's children reign over a bare spot of rock. These accusations would be different if they were levelled at you but Cersei... her children will never be kings, not so long as you have four sons."

"And two daughters," she reminded him. "Daeryssa comes after Alcuin and Dagna before her."

"By Targaryen law, the Iron Throne would pass to Stannis and his sons after Alcuin. You remember the edicts passed after the Dance of the Dragons?"

She pursed her lips. "A new king. A new edict - it shall be done. My daughters come before Stannis." Daeryssa would be twice the ruler that wretched man would be. She was a better ruler than Robert, the wineskin with legs. Sex did not matter. Nor does blood, she thought, remembering what Rhaegar had once said.

By law, the Iron Throne should have passed to her eldest son, the very eldest one. And then to the Beggar King and then his nephew and then his sister... and then the Baratheons and her younger children. But Robert won it by right of conquest and I have raised Bran and the others to be better rulers than ever Rhaegar's child or his sister could be. Bran will be, must be king someday. She would make it happen.

"And it would be unwise to pass such slanders against Lord Tywin's daughter." He looked at her. "Some would whisper that they came from you."

"Some might even whisper that Stannis and I were lovers, though I have a better chance of seducing his horse than him," she said dryly. "Lovely world isn't it? So... what did you write to Stannis?"

"I only said that I would look into the matter, making no promises. In the meanwhile I urged him to keep his own counsel, to guard his tongue and his actions." He paused. "I do not trust Cersei," he said bluntly. "Should a whiff of this rumour catch her - the woman is wild, as you well know. And she will be quick to turn any situation to her advantage."

And to my disadvantage. It was a tricksy ground they played on. Sometimes she felt that everyone was against her though she had everything on her side - the princes, the crown, the North, her wits and something of youth still and perhaps, beauty. She was not so old - she had not seen one-and-thirty years yet. My hourglass is not yet run out, she thought. I will see this through. But she hardly knew what she meant to see through - was it the long winter or the game of thrones? What was her purpose? She had once known but now it seemed that she had lost her way, past all hopes of finding.

No, she thought as they looped a curve and she realized that they were only a half-hour's ride from Winterfell. No, I'll find it here. I'll find it at home.

000

She was back in the crypts, but this was no dream.

Benjen held the lantern and she moved in the swinging arc of light cast by it. The shadows were held at bay, sullen, wrathful but tamed. The kings of winter, with the iron swords across their laps and the direwolves curled at their feet, watched as the two of them slinked down. They were as sly as the shadows and as guilty as grave-robbers. The kings' hollow eyes stared into nothingness but Lyanna could not shake off the feeling that they were watching them both, measuring them.

This is where the dead walk, Brandon had whispered to her when she was a bit of a girl, scarcely more than four or five. Ned and she had believed it then though of course they'd learnt better later. Did we? she thought, clinging to Ben's arm. Who is to say that they do not walk? Beyond the Wall, there had been strange rumours heard, of wights and White Walkers.

"Do you come down here often?" she asked him. Her voice echoed strangely off the walls and almost as though he was frightened, he put his arm around her shoulders.

"Not in seven years, no," he said. "The last time I came here was the day you left Winterfell." That had been seven years ago. "I- I don't like it here. Roslin wanted to see the place after we were married but I couldn't take her - the children did though."

"Neither do I," she said softly. At another time she would have murmured the graceful compliment in tribute to his bride's youth and loveliness, teased him for a craddle-robber perhaps. But this was not the time. "Neither do I."

"You hurt Ned," he said thoughtfully. "Not letting him come down with us."

Ned had offered but she'd said no, stay and feast Robert, you haven't seen him for so long. Ben will serve as well as you. "At any other time I would be glad of his company," she said honestly. "More than glad but this... this is different. You know that. He wouldn't understand."

"He'd try to."

"It wouldn't be the same." She floundered for a word to fill the gap. "It doesn't wear on him the way it does on us. It shouldn't either, he was never to blame, not like me, and he fought it out, not like you..." I still felt guilty but then... then I fought it out, got drunk on battle and beer and women, gods all the whores at the Peach, I think... I made my peace. You never did. What was it in spilling blood and sating bestial passions that gave a man absolution? There must be something - her sweet Ned had made his peace years ago, she had seen it in his face and his manner. Lysa and she and so many of the women she knew had not, never would.

"I never told him you know, about that," Ben said mildly. "Ned. I kept your promise. The other things, he guessed-"

And did he tell Robert? Lyanna could not help wonder. She would attend to the matter of what Robert knew and what he had guessed later - for now it was enough that he did not enough to turn on her.

"And he told me it wasn't my fault, that I wasn't to blame." His voice was very dry. "Hardly a consolation in the grand scheme of things."

"They told me that too," she admitted. "And I believed it as much as you do." She had been a giddy, wilful girl of fifteen and he barely twelve but that did not absolve them. She had run and he had helped her. That knowledge would always stand between them and Ned. Children carry their father's sins and fathers carry their children's.

"I was at Winterfell all the while," he said. "Doing two things I never thought I'd be quite doing - praying and waiting for the ravens. When I heard that Catelyn had had a son I thought to take the black when the war ended... if I did not end up burnt to a crisp, that is. You remember what the black brothers used to say? That joining the Night's Watch absolved a man of all his old crimes? And then there was always the matter of the winter he would write to you about... I thought I could be of better use as a ranger on the Wall than as a paltry lord tending my nephew's keeps."

"And I was at the Tower of Joy all the while," she said. "Waiting to die. The septons preach that death absolves a man of all his sins." She punched his shoulder. "I'm glad you didn't take the oath, baby brother. Black isn't your colour."

"Neither is death yours."

"Now that's unfair. Don't you think I'd have made the prettiest corpse you ever saw? I'd be as sweet as your little bride. All in white but stained by blood to heighten the effect." As she said it, she could almost see it again. The girl and the bed of blood, the cracked lips and the parched tongue, the burning forehead and the child's thin wails. "And roses, oh yes, blue roses for my hair." There had been roses there, brittle and black and as beautiful as the kinslayer's heart.

He chuckled. "A vain corpse, certainly. But I'll wager that you'll live too long to make a pretty corpse, as long as Old Nan. We Starks are hard to kill." Before she could open her mouth he pinched her. "Hush. You're as merry as the Drowned God's priests, Lya. How Robert stands you and your dire bed and your prophecies of doom and gloom I'll never know. You were fitter by far for the other one and his sad songs and his long winters."

She had to laugh at that. "Someone has to be gloomy," she said. "Robert won't be, so it falls to me to bear the burden of the world on my shoulders."

"I wish I could say that you bear it beautifully. You look old enough to be his mother these days."

"I must have improved quite drastically then. A moon's turn ago he claimed that I looked like his grandmother."

He started to laugh but then quite abruptly, he stopped. "We're here," he said shortly and as simply as that, all the mirth went out of his voice. They were with their dead.

000

Tonight they danced to the northmen's songs, the proud lords and high ladies, all southron-bred, of her court. Robert's high harpist had played for them while they supped, a banquet that had lasted five hours. But when the time for the dancing came she'd called out for the songs she'd grown up listening to - the harsh, crude bastardized words of the First Men that the giants and the wildlings still spoke, in please of the grace of the tongue of the Andals and the dignity of High Valyrian. The skirls of the bladder-and-bagpipes and the woodharp in place of lute and high harp. Rousing songs of home and hearth and wideacres in place of the false songs of chivalry and courtly love.

They had cheered her choice at the lower tables, though Cersei and quite a few of the other ladies looked as though they had swallowed lemons. Robert, who could dance to anything, had whisked a politely bewildered Catelyn off and Ned had offered her his arm.

She had only danced one dance, pleading her condition. Now she sipped Arbor Gold from a goblet of polished silver and listened as the music grew wilder, as the drums and warhorns were brought out. Faster and faster the music skirled around her as the singers relieved old battles, old sorrows. They had her tapping her feet in time and if anyone had approached her she would not have been able to help throwing her train over her arm and joining the dancers.

This is what a king and queen should look like, she thought watching the Lannister twins leading all the dancers on the floor. Cersei was in black, Jaime in white and all eyes were drawn towards them. Nine-year-old Daeryssa was partnered with Ned's oldest son, fourteen-year-old Robb. Close to them danced another pair of cousins, her Bran and Ned's elder daughter, eleven-year-old Sansa. She could not make up her mind which pair was more striking, which the image and which only the reflection. Big, blustering Robert had Benjen's dainty little bride, Roslin Frey, on his arm and gaunt Ben led stout Lysa. She had hoped for a glimpse of her little boy but it was not to be - Catelyn had seen fit to banish him to the lower tables, far from her eyes.

"You used to lead them all." Ned took the chair next to her. "You never sat down a dance and you'd be dancing long after all the other girls were dead on their feet."

"When you're used to riding for days on end, a few hours' dancing is nothing."

"You ought to be dancing now." He studied her face. "You used to love nothing better. You had a smile this wide-" He spread out his arms and she laughed.

"I was a vain little thing," she said frankly. "I liked many things better than dancing but I always smiled the most when I danced because it made me look prettier. I liked to feel that I was prettier than everyone else - and at Winterfell I certainly was - and that men were admiring me and lusting for me."

That took him aback. He would have preferred to think his sweet little sister as pure as she looked. "Sansa reminds me of you when she dances," he said, sounding doubtful. "When she sings too... though of course Arya looks more like you."

She had noticed the resemblance too. It was most striking. "She seems a wilful little thing," she said. "Somewhat-" She rubbed her fingers and thought about it. "Something something." Their was something about the child that made her distinctly uneasy, something she could not quite her finger on. "Sansa's a little flower - I expect you'll want to marry her to the south when she blooms?"

Ned looked uncomfortable. "Cat and I haven't given a thought to betrothals yet."

"You'll have to, soon enough," she said bluntly. "Five children and their marriages will be as much to your advantage as mine. You keep this sort of thing hanging for too long and you'll have no end of trouble on your hands. We had thought to wed Bran to the Princess Arianne but- what?"

He was looking at her strangely. "You've changed," he said wonderingly. "Remember when you were fourteen and Father betrothed you? Didn't you say that you'd never use your own children so, that you'd leave them free to make their own choices?"

"It's been a long time since I've been fourteen." She took another sip from her cup, though Ned, with a northman's prudishness, did not seem to approve. "A mercy for the realm, that. Robert's immature enough for the both of us. Sometimes I wish the Lannisters would brew us up another rebellion - he's never so happy or alive as when he's fighting a war." And it would solve all our problems with one clean swipe. Pity Lord Tywin's not Balon Greyjoy.

"I've always mistrusted the Lannisters." There was open disapproval in his voice now. "I told you to have Jaime Lannister sent to the Wall, even Jon agreed that it would be to the best but no, you wouldn't hear of it."

"The whitecloaks would have lost their prettiest face. Who would have been my Aemon Dragonknight if I wished to play the role of Queen Naerys and put a bastard in the royal craddle? Barristan? He's not handsome enough nor young enough for your sweet sister."

"Lyanna."

She laughed and squeezed his hand. "There's nothing that reminds me more of home than you disapproving of everything I said or did."

"Not everything-"

"Well not everything then. Just most things. Like the time we climbed to the top of the weirwood tree to look at the robins' eggs and-"

"-And Ben broke his arm."

"Breaking bones is a stepping stone on the path to manliness and manhood and all things manly."

"I never broke an arm," he said piously.

"That makes you an eunuch then. Even I broke my arm."

"Because you were stupid." His eyes crinkled and he squeezed her hand too. "I've missed you, Lya."

"Oh Ned-"

"There, I've softened you up. Now you'll tell me why you let the Kingslayer remain."

She raised her eyebrows. "Softened me up, eh? Since when did you learn cunning?"

"Since I began dealing with Sansa and Arya."

She chuckled. She could easily see how a miniature version of Catelyn and a miniature version of herself would clash. I set Catelyn Tully's hair on fire when I was seven, didn't I? "Why didn't I send the Kingslayer away?" She brooded over it. "Because he betrayed his oath I suppose."

His eyes widened. "Lyanna-"

"Aerys killed Father and Brandon. He killed Aerys."

"Two wrongs never make a right."

"No," she said quietly. "No. But they do balance eachother out. He only did what I would have done."

"I don't believe it. You would never have broken an oath so solemn, so-"

She let Ned's words wash over his, wondering how he could still believe in her. What was there in her that he still saw? Did he see anything at all or was he only deluding himself? There were men who still called her the greatest beauty of the age, even after they'd seen her - gaunt and withered and silver-haired. They did not see her with their own eyes, only with the eyes of the singers who delighted to tell the tale of the rose and the dragon and the stag.

"Let him be king over charred bones and cooked meat," she said softly, almost dreamily. It was as though she was singing a song. "He would have given him ashes." Ned fell silent while she told him the story, sketching it in a few brief words, the way Jaime had when he'd first told her. That had been some nine years ago, when Robert had gone to put down the Greyjoy Rebellion, leaving behind a pregnant queen and two small princes. There had been harsh words spoken that night and 'oathbreaker' and 'kingslayer' had flown freely from her lips while he'd laughed and lounged against the windowsill, before telling her, almost lazily, how her father had died and how he'd killed her father's killer.

He might not have killed Aerys for me, but he slew Aerys as a murderor must be slain, nonetheless. Father was only one of Aerys' victims and it was meet that he butchered the Mad King.

Ned's face was as impassive as stone when she had finished. Looking at him, she could almost picture the face they would carve on his sepulchere. Lachrymose as he was, he only said, "But you did not know that when you pardoned him."

"Not that part," she admitted. "It only fleshes up the tale. But I did know that he killed Aerys and I knew Aerys killed Father and so..." She trailed off and looked down. He did not seem to share her point of view. "Rights and wrongs, I know," she admitted. "You don't need to preach over my head. But I hoped- I hoped that if I pardoned Jaime I would be pardoned too." She bit her lip, wondering how to explain it to him. "Not that I could ever pardon him, the gods watch us all and it would be wrong of me to assume their role. I only thought that if I was merciful, I'd be shown mercy in my turn."

It had all seemed so simple when she'd thought it through, years ago. She'd not been eighteen then, though. She could be wrong. She had been wrong about many things. An eye for an eye, she had been taught to think of justice that way when she was a girl. Murderors were executed. Thieves had their hands chopped off. Rapers were castrated. That was her father's justice. A mercy for a mercy, she'd thought, assuming that if she was merciful, she would receive mercy in her turn. An eye for an eye makes the whole world, she thought, remembering something someone had told her in passing once. Who was it? When was it?

"You did nothing that would warrant mercy, Lyanna. You were never at fault." There was tenderness in his voice and in his touch as he stroked her cheek. "Believe me on that."

There is nothing so sweet as a mother's love, they said. She'd never had a mother - her brothers had been her world and she'd revered her father like she did her gods. After she'd sent them to their deaths... "I'd love nothing better than to believe you," she said honestly. "Someday I might even but now... now..." She chewed her lip and suddenly the words came tumbling out because for the first time in many years, she felt truly safe, in her father's hall and by her brother's side. This was where she had always belonged. No one could take that from her.

"I think I need to feel guilty," she said. "Because if I didn't bad things would happen-"

"Bad?" He raised an eyebrow. "Lyanna, sweet-"

"Yes, bad. Think the Wall falling and mountains being blown away and the Doom coming to Valyrian bad. The gods made me for a reason-"

"-They made us all for a reason-"

"And they made me for more reasons than they made you." She knew he could not understand, that he would never understand. Perhaps it was the wine that had loosened her tongue, the sense of safety she felt. She was telling him things she'd always kept buried inside her, things she'd never even acknowledged to herself. "They made me special. He thought he was the prince and then he thought it would be his son but it wasn't, no not even-" Even drunk she would never say his name. "-Not even the boy. He's a child, he's less a prince than his brothers. I've been through more than he ever was. I knew my duty more than he ever did and I stuck to it, damn him, damn them all, I did." She slammed her goblet on the table and wine spilled out, splattering her silken mantle. She was too far gone to care.

"A breeder for his weapons, am I? A fool woman, am I? One saw a womb and the other saw a cunt. Fuck them, I'm worth the both of them put together." She was sobbing she realized but she made no effort to wipe them away. "Tears are a lady's weapon, the septas tell my girls but men think they're a weakness. You do too, I know you. What do you know? What do men know? They're my strength, every tear I've shed has made me harder and stronger."

Rhaegar made me cry more than Robert ever did. There's a kinder fate waiting for Robert.

"They both thought that they could rule the world with their swords and their lances, never thinking that there'll always be a sharper sword, a straighter lance." She leaned closer to him. "Let me tell you a secret, Ned. The world's made up of players and pieces. Every man's a piece to start with, even some who think themselves players. But it's a shifting game we play and there's naught to say that a piece will remain a piece forever. A man will tell you that sharp steel and strong arms rule the world. They don't." She thought about Robert and what he had revealed just that morning. I ought to listen to my advice.

He studied her. "And you were a piece?"

She smiled at him. "Why Ned, what makes you think that I'm not anymore? We're all players to some pieces and we're all pieces to some players." But she wasn't, she was different, the gods had made her for a reason. Melisandre of Asshai had only seen what she had always known. "I'm tired," she said, rubbing her face. "Talking is exhausting."

"You're drunk."

"That too." She slipped her arm through his. "Pray take me up to bed."