This chapter was only supposed to be uploaded next week, but since my master is really coming to an end, giving me more time, and that many people told me they wished this story was uploaded more often, I decided that I will keep updating one chapter every week at least until the end of Season 7.

The incident at the Inn at the crossroads, though very different. For those who would like to understand a part of Catelyn's behaviour in this chapter, I invite you to read again a promise she made in her first chapter while watching over Bran.

CATELYN II

The inn was crowded. She and Ser Rodrik were lucky to get the last empty rooms. The innkeep, Masha Heddle, hadn't been unkind with them, but she hadn't given them as much attention as when Catelyn travelled with her lord father through the Riverlands. The woman didn't recognize the daughter of the Lord of Riverrun, which was exactly what Catelyn wanted. Now she was heading to see him one last time. She would send the orders Ned gave her from Riverrun. Vyman, her father's maester, would keep the secret.

She and Ser Rodrik were officially a father and his daughter from Fairmarket, travelling to see relatives in a village near the Tumblestone. That wasn't easy, with Ser Rodrik always calling her my lady. She had to repeat to him again and again that she was his daughter until they reached Riverrun, but he kept calling her the same way, no matter how often she told him. When they entered the common hall where everyone ate, they took places well apart from everyone else. She recognized sigils from some men there and there, men in service to Lady Shella Whent, Lord Jonos Bracken and Lord Walder Frey. The late Lord Walder Frey, as her father called him.

They sat at a table. She was exhausted, which was why she decided to stop at the inn, despite the risks. Someone could recognize her, but they both needed a good night of sleep after so much time on the Kingsroad with only a few hours to sleep every night. Sometimes, they rode under heavy rain. After the inn, they would ride west to Riverrun. She had to arrive before her father died. Vyman didn't give him much time to live, to believe her father's own words. She should warn Lysa once she arrived, so she might have the chance to come in time to say goodbye. At least, Edmure and their uncle Brynden would be there. She hadn't seen them in years. She would have been overjoyed at the prospect to seeing them again if it wasn't soured by the news of her father's declining health.

Catelyn wished she asked more questions to Lady Margaery back at Winterfell. She was the one her father gave the letter to. She could have asked her for more details. The Lady of House Lannister had been very kind during all the time she stayed at Winterfell. When Petyr told her that the dagger used against her son belonged to Tyrion Lannister, she had considered for a very short time that his wife could be involved as well, but remembering the young lady, she couldn't bring herself to believe that she could seriously take part to such a horrible thing. Her husband was behind this and she certainly knew nothing of the plot. Catelyn wondered once again how Margaery Tyrell could be married to the Imp and yet be happy.

A singer was boasting not far away, trying to convince the Frey men to pay him for his music. Catelyn smiled, hearing him tell everyone that the Lord of Riverrun himself once said he never heard something more harmonious than his voice accompanied by his woodharp. Catelyn highly doubted her lord father ever said that. He had nothing against music, but he didn't enjoy it very much either. Sansa loved music, on the other hand. Arya, not as much. Her sons preferred to spar with swords and shoot arrows.

She remembered her father teaching swordfight to Edmure himself from time to time. Now that he was taken to bed, he couldn't do it anymore. Hoster Tully had been vigorous in his youth, full of life, riding all across the Riverlands to meet his bannermen continuously, hunting with every lord and landed knight who fell under his authority. She had vague memories of him taking her on his shoulders when she was a little girl, but she was so young at the time that she could barely remember, and yet she knew he had done so. Was all that gone now? Was he really going to die? Bran was alive, at least there was that, but he wouldn't be able to walk again. Running, climbing, riding, all that was gone for him as well. The gods took what they wanted.

"Are you all right, my lady?" Ser Rodrik asked her. Her face must have shown the emotions troubling her heart.

"Yes, I am. Father."

He chuckled. "Old habits die hard."

The musician chose this moment to come and sit right next to them, without being invited. "Seven blessings to you, goodfolk!" he declared.

"And to you," she replied.

"Boy!" Ser Rodrik shouted. "Bread, meat and beer. Quickly."

"Ah, good idea, grandfather. I'm starving. A song while we wait or...?"

"I'd rather throw myself down a well." Ser Rodrik didn't like music. He saw it as something for girls, but not for healthy young men when they could hold a sword. The contrast between the two men made the situation quite funny. The proud and courageous old knight and the proud and young musician who thought his music could make every girl fall in love with him. That was what she needed to lighten up her mood.

"Now now, grandfather, this may be your last chance if you're heading north. The only music the Northerners know is the howling of wolves!" The words weren't as funny as he thought they were, but his behavior really made him quite hilarious.

"How would you know that? Have you ever been in the North?"

"Why would I? There are only blizzards and bearskins up there, and nothing to sing about. I hear all women have beards there."

He certainly never went in the North. "Where have you travelled?"

"Everywhere. I've been to Highgarden, Storm's End, Riverrun, King's Landing. The king himself welcomed me at court to play during the prince's name day."

She didn't think it was likely. The door slammed open at this moment and a thunderous voice rang in the room. "Your best table, ma'am."

"You can eat, but I must warn you, we're full up," Masha said.

"Don't worry, we have our places to sleep. Just give us a good meal."

"As you wish, sers."

"Oh, new customers." On these words, the singer abandoned them and went to the new people who arrived.

Catelyn had her back turned to the front door. She turned to look over her shoulder. She stopped breathing. The men who just arrived were about a dozen or more, and they all wore the sigils of House Lannister and House Tyrell.

"My lady, don't look. Someone could recognize you," Ser Rodrik warned her. She turned her head back to look at him and repositioned her veil to better hide her face. The knight kept looking at the newcomers. "I know some of them. They were at Winterfell with the Lannisters. There's one of Lady Lannister's guards among them."

"Does it mean Lady Lannister is here?" she asked, hope burning in her tummy. Ser Rodrik had the dagger on him. If she could see Lady Margaery and show her the weapon…

"By all the gods!" the knight muttered.

"What? She's here?"

"No. It's Jon Snow."

Catelyn turned her head so quickly that she felt a quick pain come and leave her neck. Ser Rodrik was right. It was him. Dark hair, brown eyes, a beard beginning to appear on his chin that looked very much like her husband's, northern clothes made of leather. You couldn't mistake him for anyone else. He looked even more like Ned than the last time she saw him. They even had the same expression on their face. She turned away again before he could see her.

"What is he doing here?" Catelyn asked.

"I don't know. Didn't he go to the Wall?"

Yes, he did. She saw him leave Winterfell. He was heading to the Wall with Benjen Stark and the Imp. He was supposed to take the black. What was he doing here? Did he desert? When a man said his vows to the Night's Watch, there was no way to leave it. A quick thought came to her mind, about telling everyone in the inn that a deserter of the Night's Watch was standing in their midst, but she threw the thought aside immediately. She couldn't blow up her cover, and Ned would never forgive her if she did something that could lead to the boy's death. She couldn't have him killed for the simple crime to be from a different mother. She only wanted him out of sight.

"Wait. He's with someone. There's someone with him," Ser Rodrik said. He tried to keep his head down, so that Jon Snow wouldn't notice him, but he kept looking all the same.

"I don't care if he is with someone. What is he doing here?"

"I don't know, my lady." They whispered all the time, to not attract any attention. "It's alright. He just sat at a table with the girl. His back is turned on us."

Catelyn sighed in relief. He didn't see them. What was the bastard doing here? How did he find himself thousands of miles from the Wall, in an inn where she happened to stop, along with Lannister men? Ned couldn't have called him to the capital. He told her he couldn't bring a bastard in King's Landing.

She risked a look at him. He was indeed sitting with his back turned on them. She noticed the large table with men in crimson and green armors at the other side of the hall. This had to be the retinue that Lord and Lady Lannister brought with them at Winterfell, on their way back to Casterly Rock. Was there a chance that the Imp wasn't there and she could speak to his wife in private? She couldn't talk about the dagger to Lady Margaery when her husband was around. Jon Snow was there. If he was here, then Tyrion Lannister certainly came back from the Wall as well. The man who sent an assassin after her son wasn't far away, maybe right outside the inn, and she couldn't reach him. He was surrounded by guards and she only had Ser Rodrik. She was powerless here.

After a moment, Catelyn realized Jon Snow wasn't alone. He sat apart from the men in crimson armor, but he wasn't alone. A young woman sat with him. Since they were sitting face to face, Catelyn could have a perfect look at her. She had to be fifteen or sixteen, about the same age than the bastard. She had green eyes, a pale face with thin eyebrows and normal lips, a long neck and hair as dark as the cloudy nights in the North. She wore a light blue dress that left her arms and neck bare. She was speaking in a low voice to Jon Snow. Catelyn couldn't understand what they told each other.

She turned away. People might begin to wonder what she was looking at, and some of the men at the other end of the inn might recognize her for the lady who welcomed them at Winterfell not long ago. However, her thoughts were mostly about that young girl who sat with the bastard son of her husband.

"Who is that girl?" she asked in a whisper to Ser Rodrik.

"I don't know, my lady. I never saw her before," he replied.

Against all logic of safety, she took another look at the table where they sat and tried to take a closer look while still keeping it short. The girl was slender. Very slender. You could discern forms on her chest, but timid, as if they were afraid to appear. Her breasts were quite humble, barely allowing their existence to be known, and her hips were thin. When one of the servants brought their food, she saw her take a fork, only to see that no muscle could be seen on her arms. She didn't have the best frame to have children one day. Wide hips to bear them, big breasts to nurse them, strong arms to carry them. That's the ideal for a woman.

Once she was done examining, she turned her head away again. It would be better to let the Lannisters disappear before they left. There were probably a hundred or more of them outside to escort the Lord and the Lady of Casterly Rock. If only she could speak to the lady, or better hang the lord.

"My young lady, my young ser," the singer said. He was back, but it wasn't to Catelyn and Ser Rodrik that he spoke. He spoke to Jon Snow and whoever that girl with him was.

"I'm not a knight, minstrel," the bastard said. That was the first time Catelyn heard him speak since he entered. Without any doubt, that was him.

"Oh, too bad. Will you still give a singer a silver coin for a song at the intention of your lovely lady?"

"Marillion, if I were you, I would leave this place immediately." It had to be the girl. She had spoken quite loud. Catelyn looked at the scene. All the attention would be to the singer. No one would notice her.

"So, my lady heard about the great Marillion. Finally, someone who knows the fantastic singer," he claimed high. "I will give you a song for free for that, my sweet lady."

"No song. The last time we met was in Highgarden two years ago. You spent an entire evening pursuing me, and in quite an inappropriate way. The guards of the castle threw you out and forbade you from ever coming back again."

Catelyn saw the singer's face drop down. The young lady was looking at him seriously, straight in the eyes, with an expression somewhere between indifference and threat on her face, but also a very thin smile on her lips.

"Again, I suggest you leave this place immediately, because when Lady Lannister hears from me that you played the Rains of Castamere, you'll regret ever coming here. You don't want to know what she does to those who play that song."

Everybody in the hall was looking at the scene now. The singer's face had gone white as a sheet. Then, all of a sudden, he ran to the door as if hounds were released on him, smashed it open and disappeared outside. A burst of laughter came from the table filled with Lannisters and Tyrells, and soon everyone was laughing in the inn. The girl didn't join the general laughter, nor did Catelyn, though Ser Rodrik chuckled a little. As for the young woman sitting face to face with Jon Snow, she had a timid smile on her lips, barely visible, but it was there without any doubt.

"You know him?" the bastard asked her.

"Yes, sadly." They were speaking with a normal voice again, but if she listened attentively, Catelyn could hear their discussion very well. The girl's voice was rich, sweet, clear, yet there was a hardness to it as well.

"What happened?"

"He came to Highgarden once. It wasn't long before Lady Margaery left for Casterly Rock. He spent the entire evening singing about love to every girl he saw, but at one moment he seemed only interested by me. He stuck around me so much that in the end I went to some guards, and when they saw how he behaved and what he was saying, they threw him out. I think he drank too much."

"Was he…? I mean… Did he… try something?"

"I think he would have been capable to try something. He made no attempt, but I didn't wish to wait until he made one."

Their own supper arrived at this moment and Catelyn and Ser Rodrik devoted their attention to it. She kept listening to the conversation that took place at her back, not far away. The young lady spoke to the bastard about constructions across the Narrow Sea, like the Long Bridge of Volantis, while he gave her details about the Wall. Catelyn seldom saw someone so curious about the Wall and the Night's Watch, let alone a woman.

"My father sends ironwood to the Wall on a regular basis. I always asked his men details about it when I was a child, but most were not interested at all by the Wall and couldn't tell me much. They found it too cold, or didn't like most of the men in the Watch."

"There are criminals among them, it's true, but some are only thieves who stole a piece of bread or a ham to eat. I had a friend there, Pyp, who ended at the Wall because he stole a wheel of cheese for his little sister. She hadn't eaten in three days. Another one was an orphan. His father was a farmer and he abandoned him when he was three."

"That's sad. When I arrived at Highgarden, I accompanied Lady Margaery for her charity works. I had never seen people so poor and miserable in my life. My parents never showed me that," the girl commented.

"My father made me follow him sometimes when he travelled in the North, but I never really saw people being abandoned like that. I thought the Night's Watch was an order that was meant to protect the Realm and had a noble cause to fight for, but at the Wall all I saw were people who were there because they had nowhere else to go."

"The world is seldom what we believe it is. Sometimes it's worse than we believe, sometimes it's better." She resumed on a merrier tone. "Too bad Ethan and Talia aren't here. They would have made a far better music than this singer."

"My sister Sansa sings as well, though I didn't hear her sing very often. She doesn't seem to want to sing when I'm present."

"Why wouldn't she?"

"I don't know. Maybe because I'm a bastard. She's always been more distant with me."

It was a good thing. Sansa had understood early that Jon was only her half-brother. It was better if she didn't attach herself too much to him. Arya, on the opposite, seemed to like him more than her other siblings, but Catelyn couldn't tell Arya to not speak to the bastard. After all, even if Jon Snow wasn't her son, he was her children's half-brother. He and Robb had played together since their birth and grown together. She reminded Robb early that he was the future Lord of Winterfell and not Jon, but he never seemed to see Jon as a threat for him. They were only children back then.

"Well, let's hope you'll never be the only brother she has." On that declaration of the girl, Catelyn almost choked on the bread she just swallowed.

"What do you mean?" Jon Snow asked.

A moment of silence went. "My mother was born to a family of seven children. She had six brothers. Two of them died not long after their birth, and three died during Robert's Baratheon's war. Two at the Battle of Ashford, and one at the siege of Storm's End. She only has one brother left. Imagine how it would be, if she had never wanted to speak to the only one who survived."

Jon Snow chuckled nervously. "Well, I don't believe my brothers will die anytime soon."

Catelyn was eager for them all to leave. Luckily, a captain came to call the Lannister and Tyrell men outside for guard duties. Only Jon Snow and that girl with him stayed behind. At one moment, Catelyn looked at them again, and she caught the eyes of the young woman. She brought her head back in a normal position, too quickly. She could feel her gaze on her nape.

"I think someone is spying on us," she heard the girl say.

"What?" Jon Snow asked.

"These two have been looking at us since we arrived."

They were made. Catelyn shouldn't have looked so often in their direction. Maybe Ser Rodrik hadn't helped either. He looked at the pair constantly ever since they arrived, but he faced them at least.

"Ser Rodrik!" He recognized him. Catelyn didn't turn her head. She kept it down, hoping that the bastard would only notice Ser Rodrik and not her. In vain. She heard a chair being pulled on the floor and the bastard walk to them. "What are you doing here?" Then a pause followed. "Lady Stark!"

She closed her eyes, sighing internally. What did he just do? She slowly turned to look at him. He looked at her in return, an expression of utter surprise plain on his face. He said her name so loud that everyone heard in the inn.

"Lady Stark." Masha made a clumsy curtsy, just like she used to years ago.

Catelyn removed her veil and stood up. She stared at the bastard. He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't even exist. She thought of the woman who was his mother, the woman who bore this boy to Ned, a son who looked so much like him, unlike her own children. That wasn't fair. She had been a good and dutiful wife to Ned, bearing his children, doing everything that was expected from her and more, but this… This was too much. Now he put them all into danger. The Lannisters outside could learn they were here because of him.

The bastard looked on the floor after a moment. At least he had the decency to do that, to realize that wasn't his place, but that didn't make Catelyn's feelings towards him soften in any way. He put them all in danger.

"Ser Rodrik, we're leaving. Now."

She walked away, the knight following her. If the bastard understood the meaning of her gaze well enough, he would understand that he wasn't to speak of her presence to anybody.

By chance, they left their horses in the stables of the inn, and they had been full as much as the rooms when they arrived. The Lannister retinue couldn't place their horses there, so there were crimson or green cloak in sight. As Ser Rodrik detached the horses, she heard someone walk behind her. She looked behind to come face to face with the same girl who supped with the bastard. She had a cloak on her shoulders now. She curtsied.

"Lady Stark, please forgive me, I didn't present you my respects back in the inn. I should have recognized you," she said.

"Well, thank you," Catelyn replied. "Who are you?"

"My name is Mira Forrester, my lady. My father is Gregor Forrester. He's one of Lord Stark's bannermen."

"You are from the North?"

"Yes, my lady." Catelyn would never have thought so, looking at the way she dressed. No one in the North, not even the Manderlys, exposed their arms or even their neck.

"What are you doing here, so far from your home?"

"I am Lady Margaery Lannister's personal handmaiden."

Catelyn now remembered that Lady Margaery's handmaidens were all dressed the same way than Mira Forrester, though she noted, not without approval, that this girl's clothes were more decent than those the others wore. "Lady Lannister told me she had a handmaiden from the North. So it's you?"

"Yes, my lady."

She considered the girl. She was from the North, her family sworn to Ned, and since she was a handmaiden, she was personally at the service of Margaery Lannister, without any other link to House Lannister than the one she had through her mistress. Ser Rodrik still had the dagger. Could she give a message to that girl for Lady Margaery and be sure she would only talk about it to her, and not to the Imp?

"My lady, it's time to go," Ser Rodrik said. The two horses were ready and he had come out of the stables. Catelyn was discussing with the young girl at the exit.

"Lady Stark, did Jon do something wrong back in the inn?" Lady Mira asked.

Catelyn turned her attention back to the girl after she gave it to Ser Rodrik a moment ago. "Jon?" she asked.

"Yes, my lady. You didn't seem happy to see him. Did he do something he shouldn't have?"

What was the bastard doing here? "Why is he here? He left for the Wall, to take the black."

"Yes, but Lord Tyrion offered him a place in his household while he visited the Wall and Jon accepted."

No, that wasn't possible. Ned had refused the Lannister's offer to take his son as a ward at Casterly Rock. Jon Snow was supposed to take the black, to make his vows to the Night's Watch. This way he would never father any children who may pose a threat to her own. Now he was heading to Casterly Rock with the Imp. He said he was taking the black. It wasn't supposed to be like that.

"Did Jon do something wrong back in the inn?" the handmaiden repeated her question. She was being very polite, but Catelyn's mind was full of anger at the situation right now. Ned's bastard had just blown up her cover, and here stood a young woman who asked her if Jon did something wrong?

"Let's leave, Ser Rodrik," she said. She mounted her own horse, helped in that by the knight. Ser Rodrik bowed to Lady Mira before he climbed his own horse.

"My lady, bastards don't choose who their parents are," Mira Forrester told her.

"No," Catelyn replied dryly.

"Safe travel, Lady Stark."

"Thank you, Lady Mira."

She and Ser Rodrik rode away, leaving the inn behind. They circled the large camp the Lannisters had set, then rode as quickly as they could to get as far from them as possible. They didn't head west. That was where the Lannisters were going. They rode north. She rode back to her family.

Instead of meeting Tyrion Lannister, Catelyn stumbled on her husband's son. At least, no one was arrested.

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Next chapter : Sansa