Thank you TopShelfCrazy for helping me make this so much cleared.

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Mance

"Is Mother here?" His son asked, restless, staring at the open sea. "How can she be? There isn't anything here."

His father could agree about the latter. There was entirely too much salty water around them for the heart of an old wildling.

Or maybe there was something! Shapes. Screams in the blue distance. Two vessels, sinking together, if his eyes were as sharp as they used to be. An ironborn longship like the one he captained now, and a vessel with blackened hull and sails.

Mance ran to the bearded ironborn man who held his ship's helm. "Stop," he commanded. "Don't go any further."

"We set out to find the Sea Song," the man replied carelessly. "She's there."

Mance was no sailor, but he knew trouble when he saw it. "She's also sinking," he stressed.

He wished he had a Myrish glass to see that far. Without knowing what awaited in front, newcomers would meet the same destiny as those two ships.

Mance's longship slowed down and rolled lazily over the silvery crests of the waves, manned by a bunch of grim-eyed strangers recruited on Harlaw, a fertile and green island in the middle of terrible winter. Yet these men preferred sailing over the high seas where death was much more certain than any promised reward. Growing food was boring and undignified.

"Is Mother there?" his son repeated the annoying question, afraid and anguished. He could speak well now, though he still had no name. Mance was unable to think of one.

"Your Mother's dead, son," Mance repeated.

"My second mother isn't," the boy said stubbornly.

They held the same discussion every day.

Mance thought he saw a very tall, blond woman, gesticulating for help on the black ship that looked empty, except for her.

"Lady Brienne," he murmured for himself. "What are you doing here? And where is Ser Jaime?" The couple had made excellent mummers in the past and they would probably never take part in any mummery in the future.

Even Mance silently believed that one mummery was enough for a lifetime. He would stick to songs from now on.

His apprehension mounted.

He was in the middle of Sunset Sea, west from the Lonely Light, a group of thirteen miniature islets clustered around the biggest one with that mad name, that lay westernmost in the Iron Islands archipelago.

Westernmost in the known world.

Yet Rodrik Harlaw had travelled beyond the Lonely Light, for reasons known only to him, taking with him the envoy of Prince Doran Martell that Mance was supposed to meet on Jon's behest, as well as the mysterious heirloom of House Targaryen, sent by the prince to Jon's dead father.

Mance had no choice. He had let his people disembark on the island of Harlaw, those he'd brought with him from the Wall. Those who were not warriors and would not or could not fight in the War of Winter. They would find good lands, plant crops and fight any ironborn who opposed them. Seeing the local mentality, colonisation with the intent of sowing should not pose much of a problem. And then he recruited ironborn seafarers, paying them with promises of gold his people still possessed, if they helped him track Rodrik and his ship, the Sea Song.

Rodrik the Reader.

Faced with the shipwreck before his eyes, Mance never felt less like a captain.

He hurried under the deck to find Val, needing to feel less lonely before deciding on a course to take.

Lonely like the Lonely Light. What a mad name.

His good-sister had refused to stay in Harlaw. "Morna the White Mask can lead now," Val had said. "I'm a fighter. I'm going back with you."

This meant back to the Wall, after Mance found the envoy of Prince Doran Martell, who was in all likelihood drowning now.

In the hold of the ship, Val stared at Euron Greyjoy with disgust. His appearance and attitude offended her, aggravating her lingering sea-sickness. Yet the two were often together, for lack of better company, since his dead lordship had defended Val from a giant kraken at the bottom of the Gorge, before Mance had driven the animal guardian of the Wall back by reciting his forsaken vows of the Night's Watch.

Euron was fingerless.

He was presently trying to tie the cut off fingers back to their stumps and failing miserably in a task that required fingers to begin with.

Mance saw no point in the endeavour. Euron was a wight. The loss of fingers could not cause him pain. Even a living man would not be irreparably crippled by it. The free folk often lost toes, fingers and noses to frostbite in winter. The condition was manageable and did not hinder long life.

Euron hid his extremities as soon as he noticed Mance, though he never bothered to hide anything from Val.

Weeks ago, on the deserted sea shore near Shadow Tower, Euron's brothers Victarion and Aeron Damphair had taken cruel revenge on him for killing and raising them as wights when he still had possession of the horn of dragonlords, whose indiscriminate usage also ended Euron's natural life. His brothers had punched him severely for the duration of a long winter night. They would have beaten him to death if he weren't already dead. Then they cut off all his fingers, spat on him, and marched North, beyond the Wall; taking with them the entire host of wights that used to be enslaved and blindly obey Euron, including his two bastard sons.

Mance wondered if they now served the Others or if they roamed free, dead and masterless.

He was a captain once, Mance remembered, deciding to provoke Euron. Into action, why not?

"I heard you were a sailor," he said. "A passable one."

"He?" Val said with contempt. "I bet he can't row a boat."

This stung his dead lordship. "What do you know?" he bellowed.

"I know self-pity when I see it," Val said poisonously.

Euron stood abruptly, turning over the table. His fingers spilled from his pockets and rolled over the floor. Angry, he stormed out, without picking up his extremities. It was the first time he ventured on the deck since the beginning of their journey.

Mance whistled and laughed, as did Val.

In silence that followed, they could hear the sea, rocking the ship, taking it into the unknown.

"Sea Song?" Euron yelled from the deck in disbelief.

When Mance and Val caught up with him, the kraken was rubbing his dead eyes on the prow, studying the strange colour of the sea in the west; dark green, lighter green and then… much farther away, black and oily.

"Son of a thrall, he has dared sail more west than west," Euron cursed with… admiration.

"Why would Rodrik the Reader go here?" Mance was curious.

"In search of the adventurers who have gone east to go west, around the known world," Euron claimed with passion. "He must have gotten word from the Lonely Light that they were sighted near their waters. Reader is a curious man and a good captain."

"That's impossible," Val said. "The world just ends. One can't go around it."

"Do you think so, pretty lady?" Euron laughed at her. "I'll make you a bet," he roared. "If I'm right and you're wrong, you'll help me tie my fingers back in place."

"No," Val said. "Others take you, deadman."

"Do you see Mother?" Mance's son turned to Euron with hope.

The sea changed hue, from very dark blue to very dark green. The ship drifted forward, rolled by the waves. Euron's ironborn wights had built it to perfection before deserting their former master and leaving the wildlings to sail south on their own.

The sea became terribly calm. There was almost no wind under the dark-grey sky, and very little light left.

The sea looked… dead.

"By the bones of Nagga," the crew muttered and gathered on the deck, disregarding their duties.

"Man your posts!" Euron hissed at them.

Some obeyed and some spat in his direction, eyeing his mutilated, black hands. By the looks of it, being fingerless was a great shame among the ironborn, greater than being dead, which would explain Euron's wish to have his fingers reattached to his body at any cost, whether he needed them or not.

The two sinking ships were stuck in the dead calm of the sea right in front of them. Lady Brienne waved her arms, calling for help, most likely. Without enough wind, the sound did not travel far. They could not hear her.

"The Reader wouldn't know about this little obstacle, would he? It's not in the bloody books!" Euron said with superiority. "Anchor her!" he bellowed to the crew. "Now!"

"We should toss him overboard," Val observed unkindly towards Mance. "Wights can't swim."

"Let him," Mance wouldn't refuse help, even when odd and uncalled for. "This used to be his world."

Mance was out of his depth at sea. At least there were no Others here. That was the only advantage.

Euron's unexpected assistance was like the red threads sewn by a caring wildling woman into Mance's old black cloak of the Night's Watch. Rules and convictions, even vows, had to change with time when they became pointless, or else they would become chains, existing for their own sake and not for any worthy cause.

Mance had hated the wights in the past, just like the Others, and he was now weighing his position, wondering if he should change it in the future.

To his surprise, it was possible to anchor the ship. The high sea was shallow where it shouldn't have been. "We go further by boats," he guessed.

They had three.

The two shipwrecks rocked back and forward, as if they were perched on the back of a sea monster.

"Another kraken?" Mance wondered aloud. "A leviathan?"

"No," Euron replied. "The reef. You. Get out of here!" he pushed the sailor off the helm and took it himself, squeezing it between fingerless fists. "You want to get close enough, you want me here," he told Mance matter-of-factly, not acting like his hateful self, but like an ordinary man.

All the ironborn sailors continued staring with contempt at their new, dead captain and his maimed hands.

"I'll steer her a little while she's anchored and get her as close as I can, wildling," Euron continued, focused on the ship's course and movements, ignoring the glares of his people. "Lower the boats and row to the Sea Song. But you stay clear from the very green water. Any survivors have to swim to you. Their possessions are lost. The reef is broad and dangerous here. Few men know about it."

"But you do," Mance said with suspicion.

Euron nodded darkly.

"We've got until the change of tide to leave," he stressed. "Or we'll be swept further west. Trust me, you wouldn't want to go where that black ship has come from."

The three boats they had could hold quite some passengers. Mance hoped they could load all the survivors at once, and that the envoy of Prince Doran was with them.

"Mother, we're coming," his son shouted and waved his short, chubby arms in the air when they began rowing slowly with Val. They would return faster, with more hands on board. The ironborn manned the other two boats

"Here!" Mance boomed from the bottom of his lungs when the sea changed colour from dark to lighter green, pulling an oar vertically through the water to keep the craft in place. As much as that could be done. "Everyone swim to here! We cannot come any closer!"

The distance to swim was not great, thirty feet at most. The sea beyond the imaginary line where the boats had stopped glittered in ominous and brilliant shades of bright green.

The shadows dance under the sea… It was the fool's song on the Wall, Mance remembered. It surely looked like the submarine shadows amused themselves here.

"Swim!" he shouted with his best battle voice. "Now! Leave all your possessions behind!"

The survivors finally seemed to understand him, because they began undressing and jumping into the water. The fastest ones soon reached the three boats.

Lady Brienne yelled back something inaudible, and then jumped into the sea in armour. That was not good. Mance dropped his cloak, kicked out his boots, lost his doublet and tunic and dived after her, wishing to be as light and as fast as possible. He heard Val and his son screaming needlessly. Mance was confident about his abilities and this sea was not colder than the lakes in Frostfangs in spring. Thoroughly awakened and spurred on by the pleasing chill, he was soon next to the armoured Lady Brienne and strove to help her reach one of the other two boats.

She objected vehemently to being rescued.

"You have to save her!" Brienne argued. "I'm an excellent swimmer. "

"Probably," Mance admitted. "Without the lovely blue breastplate, maybe you would have made it to your goal. But I wouldn't take my chances."

Brienne turned slightly pink. She was so convinced of her knightly and swimming abilities, being from another island, that she didn't consider the limitations of what she was wearing.

"Why did you jump then?" Mance wondered belatedly and followed the lady knight's gaze.

A woman who was in greater need of saving was now being pushed by Euron towards Val's boat. It was obvious that the drowning lady could not swim at all though she wore no armour. The kraken must have dived directly from the deck and cut the deadly surface of the sea with an unnaturally powerful free stroke. In this special case, his inhuman strength meant speed as well, countering the resistance of the thick, salty water.

A blue baby dragon fluttered up and down above Euron's head; with tail wrapped around a square package that appeared far too heavy for the little animal.

"Whoo-hoo!" Mance whooped in wonder.

The beast dropped the parcel into the boat and puffed blue smoke, relieved.

"Thank the gods," Brienne said. "She wouldn't heed my calls. She wasn't strong enough to hold both the lady and her luggage. I had to help."

"She?" Mance looked at the woman in Euron's arms and froze. It can't be. He fought a premonition of doom. Tyene.

And realised belatedly that Brienne was not talking at all about the presence of the lady that disturbed him so much, or not only, but also about the dragon… "A she-dragon?" he asked incredulously. "She hatched out of the egg you had?"

"Yes," Brienne answered. "And she already has a mind of her own."

Mance's son picked up the bundle dropped by the she-dragon like a precious toy, not daring to open it, but admiring the blue beast in the air as only a boy could.

The parcel protected by a dragon was most certainly the lost heirloom of the Targaryens… It meant that Tyene was the envoy of the Dornish prince was… his niece.

Free of its burden, the baby dragon fluttered to Brienne and croaked happily on her shoulder, closing her wings. Her scales shone bright blue.

Possessed by a darker instinct, Mance left Brienne holding the edge of the boat. His friend was safe with the little dragon. The wildling swam towards his initial transport, jealously snatched Tyene out of Euron's dead arms, and climbed on board with her, using a tiny wooden ladder this boat had. Euron was welcome to grope Val if he so wished. Not Tyene, limp and with her eyes closed, breathing faintly in Mance's arms.

"Is that Silence?" an ironborn with long brown hair, the next one to arrive swimming, asked about Mance's longship.

"No," Mance shook his head and shivered. It was much colder to be out than in water. "We hadn't named her when her builders ran away. We do not name children until they reach certain age so why should we name a ship? We just set sail."

Neither his son nor his ship had a name.

The truth was, Mance was bad with naming.

Dalla would have already chosen a name for their son, but she had died giving him birth…

"All hands!" the long-haired ironborn was in the boat now and commanded his people as their captain. "Take only the sleepers! Leave the axes! Swim light!"

Mance soon understood that the sleepers meant the people on the black ship, on which Lady Brienne arrived more west than west… as Euron named their position on the high seas. No one but her seemed awake on that vessel. The ironborn broke off pieces of the sinking Sea Song and used them to make the sleepers float to the three boats. No one dared harvest the black ship for wood.

"You are Rodrik Harlaw," Mance ventured into recognising the ironborn captain. "I am Mance Rayder. I was send to meet-" he dared look at the woman in his arms. "Lady Tyene," he said very cautiously and politely, confirming once more the terrifying identity of the Dornish envoy. With one arm, he wrapped his dirty cloak around him and her, but he never put his tunic back on, telling himself he did it because he would dry faster.

Tyene Sand.

He had her in his arms now. And he had just stolen her from Euron, man or deadman, it mattered little. He was caught in the act.

Val smirked at Mance and shrugged. I've told you so, her eyes said.

I know, I know. I am not dead. Yet.

"I suppose then that a thank you is in order, captain." Rodrik the Reader interrupted Mance's musings. "We would have all visited the Drowned God's watery halls before long without your help."

"Don't thank me, thank him," Mance wouldn't take credit for another man's success.

And that man or deadman was drowning now, either on purpose, wishing to end his suffering, or because he remembered too late that the wights could not swim, being too heavy in death. Val saw it too. Surprisingly, she grabbed Euron by his hair and pulled him up like a sack of bones. Mance always forgot how strong she was.

The deadman gave her a cheeky grin and hooked his arms over the boat. His hands would not serve for that.

"What's wrong with you, deadman?" Val needed to know.

"I've always had a weakness for blonds," Euron murmured in a deep voice, climbing in, finishing his own rescue.

Mance's son recognised Tyene. "Mother, mother! Tyene! I told father you'll be here," he cooed unstoppably.

How will I ever explain to him now that she is not his mother?

"Row back!" Mance roared to his sailors, ignoring his son's cries of joy.

Rodrik the Reader echoed his command.

When they were back on Mance's unnamed ship, Lady Brienne approached him with a dreamy look in her bright blue eyes. He was not used to seeing this in her. The lady he knew and respected believed firmly that there was good in the world, and in the strength of her arms to defend it.

Yet she did not expect to face wonders, except, maybe, her husband's love.

But now a little blue dragon flew cheerfully above Ser Jaime's wife; a true miracle of nature. His square burden had been laid safely in a thick and dry barrel in the ship's hold. It was a book, Mance could tell by the shape. He would let Jon unwrap it when they returned.

"I passed… I passed under the Shadow," Brienne announced with seriousness and awe, sounding as if she could not believe her fortune. "We went… we went east to go west. This should be impossible. The world is a large ball. How is it that we don't fall off?"

"It would appear so," Mance pondered the new knowledge and imagined a song about this new world, wishing he had his lute. In a hurry to leave south, shocked by the violent mutiny and departure of Euron's wights, he had forgotten it on the Wall; the first time in twenty years.

"I told you so, lady," Euron challenged Val from the helm he was again holding, steering the ship eastward.

Mance's good-sister looked away, to the reef they left behind.

"Her name's Val," Mance told Euron, suddenly eager to tease his good-sister; to get even for the look she gave him when he had seized Tyene. "If you mean to steal her, you should begin calling her by her name."

Val fumed and said nothing, gripping the rail of the ship, but the scorn in her eyes lessened. Or increased, turning into fruitless anger of an entirely different kind. Both were unexpected. Mance nearly gaped, but stopped himself in time. Don't tell that you do fancy him. That would be a far more radical change of attitude towards wights than Mance had been pondering for himself. And Val would probably gut him in his sleep if voiced any of his assumptions, good-sister or not.

Euron never noticed the change in the woman he had been stalking since he met her. He merely looked very dead, hateful and desperate. His maimed hands clenched at the helm. "Reader," he suddenly decided to acknowledge his compatriot,

"Crow's Eye," the Reader was not intimidated, nor did he stare at Euron's missing fingers, free of prejudice, unlike the rest of their people. "Why did you help?"

"You challenged me in the past," Euron replied. "How did you know I lied about sailing to the Smoking Sea and Old Valyria? You were the only one who read me at the time. How come?"

"Why are you asking if you already know the answer?" The Readers's answer matched his reputation for wisdom.

Which often bordered on the extreme lack of clarity in Mance's opinion. Wise men risked being taken for stupid and utterly ignored, if no one ever understood their meaning.

"Because you sailed to Valyria yourself on the Sea Song, at the time when my brother Balon banished me," Euron continued. "Unlike me, you've never bragged about it to anyone."

"Yes," Reader affirmed simply. "Your stories did not match my experiences."

"I thought I was ready to meet the Drowned God in his watery halls," Euron drooled on. "But then I saw Sea Song out there, and not some little longship captained by a walrus beastling from the Lonely Light…"

The inhabitants of the last archipelago of the Iron Islands were told to be skinchangers, able to turn into sea lions or walruses or spotted whales. Mance thought he would probably like those wargs better than the rest of the ironborn, obsessed with reaving and reckless sailing, when they could live perfectly well off their lands and honest trade. The ironislanders never realised that they were not as poor as they thought. Never knew they were bloody rich in comparison with his people from beyond the Wall. Worst of all, they made thralls out of the men and women they took prisoner on their sailing escapades.

Like the Others did with their wights.

Slavery was not natural. Freedom was.

"See, Reader," Euron thundered. "You are the only other ironborn who ever ventured as far as I did. This makes you an explorer, like myself. Not that I wanted to admit it back then. But today I helped you because we have that in common."

"Where have you sailed then, for true?" Reader asked incredulously, observing Euron with unkind, but also unprejudiced eyes. "Forgive if I don't count the Free Cities as exploration. The entire Iron Fleet went there."

"East," Euron said grievously, but without hatred. "To Asshai, and further ahead, into the Shadow, not fearing it, wishing to steal its treasures. I passed under the Shadow… And I would have died here, on this reef where we found you. Walruses from the Lonely Light saved me, those men we despise and laugh at… doing what I did for you now, making me swim to their little boats made of reed from my ship's ruin. And yet I didn't swim empty-handed..."

Euron gazed into the distance and spoke as a man bewitched by an unknown power. "I brought three dragon eggs out of the Shadow! In my own hands when I still had fingers... Three eggs and a horn of dragonlords! The horn was bound with red gold and it could not yet burn or kill anyone… because the dragons had not yet hatched, I reckon, so its power remained hidden... I didn't know what I had. I was skinny. I was poor and I was hungry and my brothers hated me. I lost an eye on my journey to the Shadow and earned the stupid name… Crow's Eye… Back on Pyke, I buried the horn underground because it had gold on it, and then I sailed to Pentos on a Myrish vessel, eating rats. There, I sold the eggs to a noble man called Illyrio Mopatis, still not knowing what they were. I thought they were pretty stones! I received enough coin to buy a new ship and I was happy with it. Do you hear me, Reader? I brought three dragon eggs from the Shadow and I sold them for a penny!"

"That was-" Reader began.

"Stupid," Euron cut him off. "I understood very soon what I had, shortly after giving it away. I was angry. I felt betrayed. All who knew about my stupidity had to lose their tongues. So I mutilated and muted my crew, and called my new ship Silence. And I invented the tale of sailing to Valyria, to explain having the horn of dragonlords, when it began showing its powers... No one could know my shame. I had dragons and I let them slip through my fingers… As a result of my folly, my crew is dead now, not only mute. As are my brothers and my sons. As am I. All as a consequence of my stupidity."

"What you're saying here is extremely interesting, Crow's Eye," Rodrik retorted. "You should write it down. Make an unembellished account of it. Bind your book in leather for posterity. I'm working on mine. The Road to Valyria it will be called."

Euron lifted one fingerless fist off the helm. "You wish," he put in morbidly. "I never learned how to write or read. The lordlings of the Iron Islands are often as poor and as unlearned as their thralls. If I did, maybe I would have known dragon eggs for what they were. And if I learned now, how would I hold a quill?"

The Reader had no answer to that.

"What is our course?" Lady Brienne wondered when Euron's unwanted lament ended.

"East," Mance replied. "To the Iron Islands. Then to Westeros. To Winterfell, as soon as we can. Jon and Princess Daenerys are to be married. We saw the invitation in Harlaw. The House Harlaw is also invited."

"Have you seen my husband after we parted on the Trident?" Brienne asked with hope.

"I haven't and I don't know where he is," Mance said. "I thought he was with you. But I would say that the wedding is the best place to start looking for him if you can't find him… as the dragons and dragonriders find each other."

Brienne looked down and her eyes almost watered.

So you can't.

"I think I'll be sick," she said. Bent over the railing, true to her announcement, Brienne threw up thin yellow and green liquid, and covered her mouth in embarrassment when she was done.

"Perhaps you should have a bite," Mance suggested. "There is pickled cod in the hold, fresh from Shadow Tower. It's not that bad if you don't eat it every day."

"I don't think so," Brienne gulped for air, more nauseated from Mance's proposition. "Perhaps I should sit down and have a drink of water. Maybe with Lady Tysha… Where is she? She was the only other woman on my ship. I saw her brought to this vessel, but now she's gone. Is she alright?"

Val was next to Brienne now; uncommonly helpful and kind. Mance had seen Val like this, but he could not remember when and with whom.

"Come on," his good-sister nudged Brienne gently and took her arm. "I'm Val, as Mance mentioned. I'll help you. How old are you? Is it the first time you're ill like this?"

Val ushered Brienne away in half-friendly and half-intruding conversation, acting like a hen and not like a fighter.

This left Mance on the deck with Tyene in his arms. He realised he'd never considered lowering her though his muscles hurt by now, tense from the effort of holding her.

Worse, her blue eyes were now open and she was giving him a cold, curious look.

He wondered for how long she had been studying him like that and what she saw in him, other than the man who answered her request to be bedded and pleasured by taking advantage of her and doing it violently, without any concern for her needs.

"Why didn't you wait in Harlaw?" he asked quietly. His palms began sweating though he was otherwise cold.

"My uncle said I should stay with Lord Rodrik in person until Rhaegar's envoy arrived. He said that the Reader was the only man in the Iron Islands who would never ruin a book," she explained courteously. "He and Doran maintained correspondence. They trusted each other."

Tyene wore a pretty gown under thick travelling cloak. Its colours were vivid; a combination of bright hues like Mance had never seen, not even in the capital, and much less beyond the Wall, where the only lively colour of garments was red, made from weirwood sap. The gown was...

Soaked. Transparent. Soft.

It was best not to look at Tyene's body in that. It would wake a dead man to life.

On her part, she decidedly wasn't looking at him like she did before, as if he was something… edible… and possibly sweet. She gazed at him with polite indifference.

So he put her down on the deck, painfully aware of the unnecessary awkwardness of holding a woman who was not his.

He wondered if his body was still firm as it used to be, if it pleased Tyene to be in his arms, or if she'd felt better in Euron's mortal grip. The wights were strong.

And cold. And dead.

"Rhaegar is dead," he clarified in case she didn't know. "Jon sent me. His son. Your uncle asked for me in his letter."

"I know about Rhaegar," Tyene said. "And in case you've been wondering, my uncle didn't inform me about requesting your presence for this exchange. I wouldn't have gone on this errand if I had known I would meet you."

"I didn't know either," Mance replied, stung. "But I would have said yes if I did."

It was worse than that. He would set sail to meet her with expectation and trepidation. Harbouring as he did a treacherous wish to visit Dorne when the winter was over, if it ended before he was very old and toothless. To see how she fared and if she still wanted to waste her time on a wildling. He dreamed he would go to Dorne when his people were safe. When the enemy was defeated. When his son was almost grown and had a name.

Seeing Tyene now felt like taking something for himself he had no right to demand. Not yet.

Tyene's brow wrinkled and she turned away, noticing how her soaked gown was attracting his stare. "Where can I find a dry change?"

Mance gestured to the hold. "Down there, I guess. I don't even know what we all have."

"Mother," his son beamed at Tyene, finally finding a moment to stalk her. "You're awake."

"Sweetling," she reacted, not denying his son's assumption, embracing him warmly, postponing the intention to change.

Mance opened his mouth to repeat that she was not his mother and could not.

Tyene and his son laughed together.

"Look, Mother, there are sea lions," his son said, pointing forward.

The boy was right.

And there was also a brown line on the broad horizon, not only the endless expanse of dark blue.

"Land," Mance announced and was glad for it.

They were almost back to the Lonely Light, back to the known world.

Mance whooped, accomplished, counted in his head if he would return to Winterfell in time. He would like to sing at Jon' s wedding. Hopefully it would be a happier occasion than his two previous visits to the seat of the Starks. The first time he went there with King Robert, Jon's brother was crippled, almost killed, and the second time six spearwives died… Old flaying scars on the back of his legs itched uncomfortably from the sickening, humiliating memory.

Before he could delve in his murky past in his mind, Tyene smiled. Maybe at the stupid sound of joy he released a moment ago. Her smile tickled all his senses. He wouldn't lie to himself: he wanted to steal her for true. The sooner, the better. He reminded himself that she manifestly didn't want him now. He had missed his opportunity.

So when he gave her a look of longing, he was met with the wall of a lady's courtesy, and not with Dornish… interest in what life had to offer. She was… cooler than the Lady Sansa, whose manners were always impeccable in public.

But at the same time she remained soaked, letting him see the shape of her body. And seated on the deck. His son was on her lap and she never let him go

"Is there a name you like?" he asked her on a whim. "He needs one. Since he persists in calling you Mother, maybe you could choose the name for him."

"There is one," Tyene clarified. "But I have no intention of sharing it with you."

Mance was stunned into silence.

Val reappeared on the deck without Brienne. She pulled Euron's long raven hair with heartfelt animosity. "Give that helm to someone else, deadman," she ordered him very seriously.

"Why?" the kraken was suspicious. "So that you can throw me overboard?"

Val chuckled. "Next time, gladly," she informed him. "When you act like the tongue-cutting, lying scum that you are. Today you did one better."

"Come with me," she said then, showing Euron a sewing needle, a yarn of black thread and a pouch with his fingers she must have retrieved from the hold. "This will work better than tying them. Don't make me wait or I will change my mind."