"Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?"
The dwarf was the last to arrive to supper. He dawdled to the empty seat on Robb's left side and across the table from Bran. The three Crows came next. Then a dozen vacant chairs. Nyssa stood against the wall behind the fallen child. Four other of the boy-lord's guards were posted around the room, as well as two of the dwarf's men, in blood-red cloaks.
"I hope you didn't wait for me," Tyrion said, as he climbed into his chair. They had waited. Nyssa could hear Bran's stomach growling clear across the hall. Summer and Grey Wind whimpered under the table. Now and again, Grey Wind tried to snatch meat from Robb's plate, but the boy-lord managed to stop the beast each time with just a glance.
Once Tyrion's goblet had been generously filled, the men cut into their food and the sound of knives scraping against plates filled the room. The Crows ate as though they might never eat again. They tore chicken from the bone and licked their greasy lips, much as she'd seen the direwolves do. Nyssa noticed that the boy-lord, however, hadn't so much as picked up his silverware.
"Your father lent me a book," Tyrion said. "I went to return it, but was told that the library had been closed off."
"There was a fire," Robb said.
"I hope no one was hurt."
"They weren't." The boy-lord's voice was stiff and guarded.
"Do you know what caused it?" the dwarf pressed on. He looked curiously at Robb over the rim of his cup.
"A candle, most like," Robb said. Liar, Nyssa thought. She could tell by the way he'd glanced down at his plate when he'd answered.
"Lots of kindlin' in a library," one of the Crows said. Yoren was his name.
"Yes, I suppose there is." Tyrion took a sip of wine. "A shame, though. You had many fine books."
"Has Jon taken the black yet?" Bran asked.
"Not when we left," Yoren answered. "But I 'spect he has by now."
"And how is our Uncle Benjen?" Robb asked. At the question, all three Crows stopped their chewing. Yoren wiped his hands on his black leathers. When he looked back at the Stark boys, his expression was grim.
"I guess you ought to know," he said.
"Know what?" Bran asked. He leaned forward over the table to better see the Crows.
"Your uncle led a party over the Wall. They were 'sposed to be back near a month ago and I've ne'er known Benjen Stark to be late," Yoren said.
"He's likely dead," another Crow added. "I'm sorry lads, but-"
"He isn't dead." Robb glared at the Crow, as if daring him to say more.
"Meant no offense, my lord," Yoren said.
Silence fell over the table. The Crows returned to eating. Yoren and the dwarf exchanged an occasional handful of words, but for the rest of supper neither Robb nor Bran spoke.
Nyssa knew the boy was not asleep. She could hear him shifting his head on the pillow. Sitting in her chair by the door, she held up her knife to catch the light of the low fire. The steel gleamed red. She pressed her thumb against the sharp point of the blade until a bead of blood blossomed on her fingertip.
"I didn't know you had Crow for an uncle," she said.
"He's First Ranger." Bran's voice came small and fragile out of the shadows . She couldn't see him, but his wolf's golden eyes burned in the dark."We built the Wall, you know. The Starks, I mean. I'm named after Bran the Builder."
"Who's he?"
"The founder of our House. He raised the Wall and gifted it to the Night's Watch."
"Giants built the Wall," Nyssa said. "No man ever could."
"Have you seen in it?"
"No," she admitted. Once, Alger had. No more than eight years old, and already determined to go south, he'd run away from home and made it all the way to the Wall. "I didn't know how to climb it," he'd admitted upon returning. "But you should have seen it, Nys. You can't even imagine."She'd never so much as tried to imagine it, though.
"Do you think my uncle's dead?" the boy asked. Nyssa had to strain to hear him. He spoke no louder than a whisper now.
"I don't know," she lied. More than likely, what the Crow had said at supper was true. Southerners can't survive in our world. "Do you want to hear a story?" she asked.
"No," Bran said. He stopped shifting, but she suspected he was still awake.
It wasn't until the moon was high in the sky that his breathing evened. Nyssa waited a few minutes more, to be certain that the boy was indeed sleeping, before sliding her knife back up her sleeve and tip-toeing through the dark to the door.
The lion was where she'd expected him to be, in the ruins of Winterfell's library. Nyssa slipped through the charred, oak door, like a shadow, and kept close to the wall. She liked this room least of all those in the castle. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air. In the middle of the room, there was a pile of priceless and rare books, all of them scorched beyond saving. Watching the dwarf sort through them, by the light of an oil lamp at his feet, she thought about the mountain of charred bodies back home.
The dwarf stopped what he was doing and turned around. The lamp cast dancing shadows over his gruesome face, which looked to have been carved from wood by a child's clumsy hands. He did not seem startled to find her lurking behind him. Tyrion had noticed the wildling immediately upon entering the great hall. As had the brothers of the Watch. "Don't know what that boy's thinking,"Yoren had said, shaking his head. "S'bad enough they've got direwolves running loose all over the place."Tyrion had merely shrugged and taken a hearty gulp of wine, but he was even more curious than his traveling companion. Much had changed since the last time he'd been here.
"Tell me," he said, "how did a wildling end up in Winterfell?"
"By accident," Nyssa said. She circled the little man, like a beast stalking potential prey. Yet her gaze was nowhere near as hostile as Robb Stark's had been throughout supper. Her dark eyes were cool and calculating.
"They told me you were a lion," she said.
"Disappointed?" Tyrion grinned and gestured at his ill-made body.
"Yes," Nyssa said, coming to a stop by the window. The glass panes had all been melted by the fire. A cold wind kissed the back of her neck. The boy-lord hated and feared this half-man. But to her the Lannister didn't seem much of a threat. She gripped her knife. One stroke and the dwarf would be dead.
"You lived over the Wall?" Tyrion said. She nodded. "Is it true, then, what the men of the Night's Watch say? Are there monsters on the other side? Grumpkins, giants, white walkers?"
At the mention of the white walkers, Nyssa shivered.
"I've heard things about them," she said. "Never seen any of them, though."
The dwarf's lopsided mouth twisted into a thoughtful scowl. Kill him, she thought, but still did not move.
"And Mance Rayder, they say more of your kind join him every day," Tyrion said.
"They do." Of this she was certain.
"Did he send you here to spy on us southerners?" the dwarf teased.
I'm not interested in your war. How many times had she told Bone Dust that? The land is shifting, the Child had said. But I want nothing to do with it. Nyssa loosened her grip on the knife hilt. She wasn't anyone's spy, nor was she anyone's soldier. Not Mance Rayder's, not the boy-lord's, not the three-eyed Crow's.
"I don't give a damn about Rayder," she said, "and I don't give a damn about you southerners, either."
Nyssa did not want to be in the ruined library anymore. Without any further words, she swept out of the room, but the smell of smoke lingered in her hair and on her clothes.
Robb threw back the heavy furs and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He could not sleep. He went to the window and stared out at the impenetrable darkness of the wolfswood, imagining his uncle lost in an even darker forest hundreds of leagues away. He isn't dead, Robb told himself, yet again.
A shard of moonlight fell over the saddle plans laid out on the table. Robb had gone over them, though he knew nothing about how to make a saddle. Nor did he know what to make of the Imp's gift. Lord Tyrion was to depart at first light with the brothers of the Night's Watch. Robb wished he could speed the night.
Giving up on any hope of sleep, he decided to check on Bran, but before he reached his brother's room, he stopped at the sound of soft footsteps closing in on him from behind. As he turned, he reached for his sword, only to remember he'd left it behind. Idiot, he cursed himself. It was only the wildling, though, not another assassin in the night.
"I thought I told you not to leave Bran's side," Robb said, as she approached him. Nyssa came to a halt less than a foot away from the boy-lord. She held out her knife to him. Robb looked at it, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.
"The dwarf's not a problem," she said. Robb's gut twisted.
"Tell me you didn't kill him," he said. There was no blood on the knife or on her hands. But there were ways of killing a man without shedding any blood. The wildling snorted.
"I understand more than you think I do," she said. "If I killed this lion, more would come. But the little lion, he won't hurt your brother."
"How do you know?"
Nyssa shrugged. "He's no killer." She was still holding out the knife to Robb. "Go on, take it back. I won't need it for the dwarf."
Robb didn't move. He stared at her, unsure of her motives. Why would she hand over the knife willingly, after so many weeks of demanding he return it to her? Whoever she was, why ever she was here, the wildling confused him to no end. If she wanted to, she could kill him now. He had no weapon. Grey Wind was not with him. Torchlight shimmered on the blade between them.
"No," Robb said, making up his mind. "It's yours."
"That's risky, my lord," she said. "I'm a wildling, remember? We're not to be trusted with weapons."
"I trust you," he said. The words tasted strange on his tongue, but they were not untrue. She'd been in Winterfell for a month now. If she'd meant to harm them, she would have. "But make no mistake, that doesn't mean I like you," he added hurriedly.
Nyssa cared not if the boy-lord liked or trusted her, but she was glad he didn't want the knife back. She made to step around him and continue on to the fallen child's room.
"What are the notches for?" Robb asked. Nyssa paused with her back to him. She said nothing for a long time. He thought she wouldn't answer and was surprised when, at last, she did.
"One for every man my father killed," Nyssa said, stroking the notches in the walrus bone. She glanced over her shoulder at the boy-lord. "It was his knife."
"Where is he now?"
"Dead," she said. There was no sorrow in her voice. Her dark eyes gave nothing away. Robb watched her go until she disappeared down the long, shadowy corridor. A thousand more questions withered, unanswered, in his breast.
