Chapter Forty-Eight: Absolution

The Maester's Turret

Jorah Mormont

It is a strange thing for a man to know he is going to die. Half a hundred years of history bleed away. A thousand traumas, pains, and fears all die in an instant, repelled by the very notion that it all is coming to an end.

This was not the first time Jorah had felt this fear. He had felt it every day, as the grey scales crept from his arm to his chest to the bare skin of his throat. But Daenerys had a need of him, and so he stood. He felt it every day in the Red Waste, fearing that each morn would be his last. He would succumb to the heat, to the starvation, to the thirst. But Daenerys needed him, and so he stood. He felt it every day after the march beyond the Wall, after seeing the Walkers, after feeling their skin against his own. But Daenerys needed him, and so he stood.

She needed him to help command her armies. She needed him to help fight the wights. She needed him for information on the North and Westeros. She needed him to support her, after Drogon had fallen. She even needed his advice as she crept her way to the throne she was destined to hold.

But his khaleesi had left the throne behind, and Jorah the Andal was no longer needed.

The pain was unbearable, even with the poppy milk numbing it some. Red heat flared all across his shoulder, and the black rot crept closer and closer to his heart. The maester told him he would not survive to see the morning, and offered him sweetsleep to ease his passing, but Jorah had refused as soon as it came. He would not spend his last hours prostrated on a bed. Would that he could spend them with a sword in hand, defending his queen to his last. The gods were good, but not so good. They had given him the chance to save her, and now he would devastate her.

He was not alone that day. The khaleesi had been at his bedside through the night, and she would still, had the maester not called her away for some reason or another, and Jon Snow with her.

Now, only the girl sat before him, sitting by the fire as she was wont to whenever she entered this place. She could walk now, supported only by her own two legs and her bandaged arms on the walls. The maester had called her in not an hour's past to practice her walking, after too many days spent prone. Jorah watched her, and the wolf at her side, without the wariness he once held. A faceless man, she might be, but she had saved the khaleesi as much as he had, and some things weighed more than others.

She had not spoken a word to him, nor any other. The wolf spoke for her, growling when she needed it to and otherwise remaining as silent as its master. Jorah knew enough about the girl's wounds to know that it would be so for many moons to come. For now, she was no more than a shadow on the wall – keeping him company, but contributing nothing. In all reality, he was alone. Alone with the gods and this girl, as his life slowly fled his bones.

There was no weirwood in this cruel kingdom, nor was this godswood made for the gods of the North. But nor was there a Sept of Baelor, and, through the slight window, he could still see knights crouching in the ruins. Men search for absolution wherever it may be found.

What better absolution than from the Bringer of Dawn?

He cleared his voice before he spoke, and it clearly caught the girl on edge. She lurched forward, reaching for that Valyrian sword, as her eyes roamed wild. With the darkness sprawled across her face, she looked positively feral. He paid it no mind.

He laughed, a cold bitter thing, stricken with weakness and sorrow. "I would die with a sword in hand. Nobler," he told her, softly. "But your father would have been pleased to see this." He twisted his lips. It took longer than it ought to. "Ned Stark." He did not spit the name, as he once might have. It was merely another name among millions. "It was he who exiled me from Westeros, and my father who pleaded for me to return, pledge my honor to the Watch." He frowned, let his head fall back against the beaten pillow. The move was enough to make his wound screech, but he lacked the energy to do much more than grunt. "I joined the Khal Drogo's khalasar instead.

"I'd sold men into slavery," he went on. The girl's gaze hardened. It was more of an expression than he had seen on her since she had fought Jon Snow on the island. Before that, since he had said her name in Harrenhal, when her eyes lit like a thousand suns, filled with pleasure, sorrow, and a million things more. "It was wrong of me, I know, but I had a wife. She was beautiful. Blonde as a Lannister, sweet as a Tyrell, but she had the tastes of a dragon, and I had few coppers. I needed coin, and I found myself in Essos for it."

She drew her sword some, but seemed to lose her drive halfway through the drawing. Instead, she slumped against the wall, wincing, and Jorah had never felt so akin to a Stark of Winterfell.

"I thought that I would spend the rest of my days toiling for a pardon that would never come. I thought that my honor had died the day I fled, but I met the khaleesi, and my honor was restored." A hint of a smile settled on his face. He did not look to see how the girl would respond. "I helped free the unsullied in Astapor, the slaves in Meereen, and the many slaves of the dothraki. I fought beside freedmen, and they fought beside me. I served in the fighting pits of Meereen, fought grey scale, White Walkers, and a dragon, all for her." He paused to cough. He hardly felt the pain. "Everything for her…"

It was the most he had spoken at once for years, and it hurt his throat to try. But Arya Stark was not likely to interrupt, except to kill him, and Jorah would be lost soon, as it was. There was little he could bear to do, but lie there, speak his tale, and await his coming death. At least this would pass the time.

For her part, the Stark looked interested enough. Her hand had left the sword, at least, and was instead scratching at the many bandages on her cheeks. There, Jorah could still see the faint outline of darkness, like pools of black blood, though now he could see hints of a thick dark blue, like the deepest ocean waters of the Narrow Sea.

"It must make you uncomfortable," he said, shifting his head to catch her eyes. They did not hold. She looked away too soon. "To be sat with a man like me. A slaver." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "and one who chained you."

There went the darkness from her cheeks to her eyes. Anger, as fiery as it was when she held a sword to a man's throat in Harrenhal. Perhaps, she hated the reminder.

"I am not one to apologize," Jorah said, "but you saved the khaleesi…" He grunted, pained. "When I could not…"

She looked to him, and suddenly there was so little rage in those eyes, she seemed like a new woman entirely. For these past few fortnights, the rage had been all he had seen in her. But it had shattered with the Night King, and now there was only cold.

"Saltpans…" He shut his eyes, and then pulled them open when he felt the rot leeching at his lungs. "The khaleesi has been threatened by assassins before. It was my sworn vow to keep her safe." Sworn it by all the honor he had left in him. There were so few scraps to spare. "I would ask for forgiveness…" but I never will.

He went on and on, praying to the gods and the girl alike. He spoke of his once-wife, of Samwell Tarly at the Citadel, poking and prodding. He spoke of Viserys Targaryen, Khal Drogo, and the only woman he would ever love. He spoke of his betrayals, and his redemption, and fighting a thousand different battles in a thousand different days. Somewhere along the way, he found that his voice had fled him, and he was mouthing empty words to the black spots that danced in his eyes. He did not see the girl at all anymore. Not at all.

His heart beat on, though. As the festering wound reached for it, still it went. It would not stop until he could see his khaleesi's face again. One last time, before he slipped into whatever life awaited him when all the trees were gone.

"Khaleesi," he tried to say, but his voice betrayed him, and the word was scarcely more than a whisper. Somehow, the girl heard him, though. He could hear her shift. "Find the khaleesi." It was a mad request, and one that he never would have made on any other day. Sending an assassin to find his queen? After all he had done against her? He may as well have called for his own head. Or, worse, hers.

But delirium was strong, and he knew it as well as any. Even the girl had paused to stare, her dark grey eyes studying him the way Ned Stark's had, when Jorah was no more than a knight in a tourney. He wanted to hate her for those eyes, but he could not hate her any more than he could hate Ned Stark. It had not been Stark's decision to sell men into bondage, nor to send him into exile. Jorah's. It was only ever Jorah's.

For a long while, he thought that the girl would not move at all. Her labored breath remained as short as ever, but without the hitch that came whenever she moved. She simply stared and sat, as if she had not heard him at all.

Then, like a blessing from the gods he had betrayed, he felt her rhythmic breathing catch. A hint of a groan tore from her lips as she stumbled to her feet. Jorah barely had time to turn his head before the direwolf leapt forward to catch her, but the girl merely shook her head and stood tall as a queen, for all that she lacked the height. Tall as a Kingslayer.

It took another few moments for her to take the first steps, but the next came no easier. She made it no further than the door before she fell, her bandaged hand scrambling against the wall, but sliding all the same. Though the wolf did its best to catch her, the girl fell too fast. The ground was too hard. As Jorah watched, her face struck the stone, and her mouth surged open in a scream that was no louder than a mouse's squeal.

The direwolf pushed its muzzle beneath her chin, but even that touch was enough to make the girl writhe. The wolf pulled back, meek as a woman, and whimpered as her master twitched.

It was only then that Jorah remembered that he was not the only casualty of the battle. This girl suffered her death just as he did. The only difference was that the gods had seen fit to bring her back, and Jorah doubted he would be so lucky. No god had ever looked at him with favor. For her, every suffering led to this – a victory foretold by all the priests and men. For Jorah, it would all lead to a corpse in a grave, if he was even so lucky as to have that. If there were any Mormonts left, he doubted they would have him in their crypts, on their island, or anywhere close. The khaleesi might have insisted once, but she was no queen, and she had no more say than he.

"Sit," he told the girl, when she had recovered enough to breathe. His voice was nearly as weak as hers. With every second that went by, it seemed the world sapped more of his strength. Within the hour, he thought, he would have none to spare.

She looked at him for a moment, eyes wide and gaze suspicious. Yet, beneath her markings and her scars and the fear that never seemed to leave her, she looked for all the world like a child. The way the khaleesi had, when she was sold off to the khal. He would almost call her innocent, if she were not the furthest thing from it.

Innocence did not kill gods. Innocence did not kill death.

"Sit," he said again. More forcibly, this time.

She might have knelt there forever, staring, but the direwolf came to push her back. It prodded at her chest, and its touch nearly drew another scream. All the girl did, it seemed, was breathe and sit and scream.

Perhaps death was not the worst of fates, he supposed. It might be worse to live like this than not to live at all.

But, as she stumbled to her feet, leaning on the wall and the wolf for support, her gaze never once left him. Her lips moved – jerking, quick, uncontrolled. Somehow, he understood every mouthed word. "What about you?"

His smile was no more than a sneer. "I will die," he told her. "Dead men need no friends."

The direwolf pulled her back to the flames. She slumped as the wolf bid, knees pulled tight to her chest, and arms trembling where they wrapped around her legs. She trembled much the way he had before, when his flesh had still been warm. But the world was cold now, and Jorah could see darkness dancing behind his eyes.

"Sorry," she mouthed.

He let his head fall back against the pillow. He was tired of holding steady. He was tired of dying.

It was that thought that had him tilting his head, waving a weak hand in her direction. Bolts of agony jolted from his shoulder, but it made no matter. There was a numbness to the pain now. Everything was just a little fuzzier. Just a bit more blurred. Like staring through the green waters of the Westerosi and hoping to see an eel.

"What was it like?" he asked her. He made to clear his throat. "Beyond the grave…"

The wolf cocked her head. The girl only stared, her eyes white as snow. Then, after a long moment passed, with Jorah gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of rotted pain, Arya Stark's head shook, ever-so-slightly. Like him, she bared her teeth against the pain that set in, but both knew that neither of them would crumble to it. They were warriors, and warriors knew pain like a lady knew her sewing. Like an assassin knew her steel.

He smiled at her. A sad little smile. It was all he could do to let his mouth fall open, and to say, "I look forward to learning."

Against the next wave of pain, he shut his eyes. This time, he could not bear to bear it. All men deserved the chance to rest.

Even disgraced exiles.

They were men too.

Forgive me, khaleesi, he might have whispered, if his words did not flee him. The dark spots were getting larger. The wound was growing numb. The fear was fading, moment by moment, spasm by spasm.

He could taste sickness on his tongue, and he could smell the terrible scent of rotted blood, all around. He would succumb to this sickness, he knew. The only question was when.

He could not say how long he sat there, waiting for the cold hands of death to claim him, as it had refused to on the battlefield. It was a gift, he reasoned. The gods had given him the chance to see his khaleesi safe. What man could ask for more?

Yet, if they asked him, he would ask for a thousand things. The chance to see her smile again. The chance to stand at her side. The chance to crown her, before a sea of adoring Westerosi, as her dothraki and unsullied stood by. The chance to serve her for a dozen years, a hundred, a thousand! The chance to see her grow old. The chance to see her happy.

But, to the gods, Jorah Mormont was worth no more than the dirt beneath Daenerys Targaryen's feet, and his wishes would never be fulfilled.

It was when his vision had fully gone black, but when he still clung to life with a childish stubbornness, that he felt the weight press against his hand. Fingers latched through his – each small and calloused and unburned.

"Mercy," she told him, with a voice as silent as the summer snows of his youth, when all that was was an island for bears. It took him back there, to a place where he had been no more than a boy with a stick sword, and the troubles of the world were the daydreams of tomorrow.

He smiled. "Mercy," he answered, and his voice was no louder.

The hand stayed, wrapped in his own hold. But, before too long had passed, there came a weight, pressing above his face. The breaths, they halted, each stuttered as they already were, now smothered out by a soft death. His head came down on a hard bed, as he choked and whimpered a died. A single terrible burning tore through each surviving string tethering him to this dying vessel. And, when they were all gone, he stared into the darkness, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

The pain fled before the end, and he had never been so pleased to see it go. He whispered her name, one last time, with the few dregs of air still stuck in his undeserving lungs.

"Daenerys," he whispered. "Daenerys."

And Jorah the Andal was no more.

End: RIP Jorah the Andal. We hardly knew yee. Half the readers despised you. It was mostly unintentional on my part. You were a solid guard, saved some slaves after selling some, and ultimately defended the woman you love. A tumultuous life, but a redeemed man.

Anyway, it's about time we return to our favorite smith as we ramp up the action just a tad. See you then!