Hello, dear readers!
First of all, I hope you are ok. I'm sorry I haven't updated "A Wreath of Thorns" in a while, but this doesn't mean I stayed idle. After this chapter, I have another ready to be updated, and a third in the making: I am in no way abandoning this story, rest assured of that!
JON
"Remember when I told you there couldn't possibly be a shittier place than Castle Black in winter?" Ser Bronn of the Blackwater hissed through gritted teeth as they ploughed their way through a thick layer of mud. "Well, I was wrong."
Jon couldn't really argue with that.
He raised again Longclaw to open a passage through the low, rotten tree branches and paused to peek around.
The lands of the Neck were truly one of the most viciously dangerous territories he had the misfortune to travel through. He knew dark and cold. He went beyond the Wall more than once, but here, the windy winter he was accustomed to turned into a dank, heavy shroud stinking of mildew and putrefaction which withered muscle and bone and shattered the resolve of even the toughest among them, making their progress twice as slow and fraught with danger.
His breath frosting in loud pants of fatigue before him, he glanced over at the Kingslayer, and read his same worry and powerless exhaustion in his green eyes.
The last outpost of human life, a deserted inn just past Moat Cailin, where at least they managed to take cover from a snowstorm that had nearly caught them unawares, had long disappeared beyond the misty hills. After leaving what little safety the chartered paths along the Kingsroad had to offer, Jon's small party had pushed forward, into the most gruelling and inaccessible area of the Marshes. Here, the vegetation of evergreen soldier pines, sentinel trees and the small patches of hammocks and fens which had greeted them through the Barrowlands had given way to a desolate, grey wetland where eerie, misshapen trees sprouted from the bogs, their bare twigs sinisterly clawing at their faces like bony fingers, while the higher branches sagged limply under the weight of pale moss, hanging like widow's weeds from their extremities. In some parts, the mud reached their waists, and they had to trudge with their arms stretched above their heads, grabbing any knob or tree protuberance that might help to keep them afloat. In others, the soil had frozen into hard and thick layers of ice just as dangerous for both men and horses.
They couldn't stop.
If we stop, we die, Meera Reed had warned them when they entered the swamp, two days past. Or was it three, perhaps? He couldn't really tell the passing of time. Was it day still, or another night had already fallen on the Marshes? Above their heads, the canopy of mud-covered trees was so dense that nothing seemed to cut through it. Not wind, nor snow, nor light. Since a few hours, their last torch had burned to a crisp and the logs and chunks of wood surrounding them were so damp and rotten that no fire would catch.
With the weak winter beams unable to creep through the thicket during the day and no star from which to learn their position at night, the young crannogwoman was their sole guiding force through murk and mire.
The blood of the Children runs in her veins, Jon couldn't help musing as he watched her lithe form hopping nimbly from bog to bog, skimming almost magically above the muddy land as though there was a trail just below water level only she could see.
Now, he could barely make her small frame out, through the shadows, the strong rope that tied him to her waist snapping taut or loosening in turn, when her steps either gathered speed or slowed down, as she bumped against some invisible obstacle.
They were all bound to each other that way. An odd navel string joining at the hip each one of them with his or her closest companion, turning them into some bizarre twins caked in muck from tip to toe.
That was Meera's idea, as well. So that you won't get lost in the meadow.
Aside from that small incident with Quent, one of his Stark soldiers, who got his left ear amputated after a spider the size of a fist had bitten him while he rested against a tree, so far they suffered no casualties and no one got lost into that gloomy labyrinth as black as tar, although two horses got swallowed into the quicksand and a third, his own, had to be finished off after it broke a leg over an ice sheet.
Jon had secretly thanked the gods Ghost wasn't with them, then, but had prudently chosen to cross the Neck farther east, closer to the Bite's coastline. The thing didn't trouble him in the least: he knew the direwolf would find them again, once in the Riverlands, just like he did at Craster's Keep.
By now, they almost did not stop to catch their breaths, resting on their feet, back to back, and only for a few minutes at a time, for fear of being attacked by some other nasty, wild creature. Leeches that could suck a whole horse dry. Swarms of reddish-black ants that could literally strip a man to bare bones in less than a night. Lizard lions and shadow cats that ambushed their victims without a sound. Apparently harmless, small flies whose bite could lead to a bloody flux that could claim a man within a week, if the gods were merciful... Meera had made a point of enumerating them all, describing their preying habits in vivid, gruesome detail, with the same haunting voice Old Nan would use to tell him and Robb and Bran about ice spiders and ghouls and the dead that walked... Jon suspected that the veracity of at least half of those tales had been vastly exaggerated, and Meera sometimes seemed to gloat a bit too much at their own discomfort, if the smug smirk he occasionally caught on her face was any indication, but did not feel like questioning her, in their present predicament. They were deep within the territory of the lost Children of the Forest, and he could feel in his marrow that their magic still breathed, strong and lasting, between the trees of this centuries-old woodland.
He had seen too many things, lived through too many things, to not respect that kind of power, at the very least.
"Greywater is not much further!" Meera croaked in front of him, her voice thick with annoyance and pride. "And I must remind you, Ser Bronn, that it's thanks to this 'shitty place' if the North fended off all the pathetic attempts of invasion you southrons have started through the years. Take a good look under your feet: you're treading over the thousands of corpses your armies left behind on their retreats."
Jon awkwardly struggled without success to shuffle his boots out of the mud, suddenly aware of the exact nature of the things scraping against his legs.
"I meant no offence, my lady," Bronn apologised in between curses. "Quite the opposite, actually. People that for hundreds of years managed to thrive into such a waste land enough to make it their home, have all my utmost trust and sincere admiration." Then he warned to his closest companion in a gravelly tone: "But if, at the end of the war, you Lannister cunts think about repaying your debts with a keep in one of these swamps, I'll fuck both your arses with a spear."
"And how should look like, this castle of yours?" Davos' voice prompted, a few feet behind him, a tease unmistakable in his Flea Bottom accent.
Jaime groaned. "For the love of the gods, do not egg him on!"
To his left, Jon heard someone's gruff snickering. Lady Brienne, perhaps. Or Podrick, more likely.
"Warm, to start with," Bronn easily answered, his cocksure smirk colouring his words. "Thick walls, a very large master chamber and a balcony overlooking the sea."
"We have many old strongholds that look like this, on Tarth and Morne," Brienne replied, and Jon could almost see in his mind the amused twinkle in her sky-blue eyes. "If you don't mind some restoration work, lightning storms almost every evening in the summer and Lysene and Myrish pirate ships cramming the Straits at least twice a year, I'd be glad to have you as neighbour, once the war is over."
"That'd be my pleasure, my lady."
To his right, Jaime Lannister merely huffed.
In the summer. Once the war is over.
It had such a sweet ring to it! He couldn't really blame his men for their trifling chatter. They all dreamed of summer, as their teeth clashed for the cold and their feet blistered and limped inside their cracked, mouldy boots. With morale at its lowest, any thought that could bring small comfort to mind and body was more than welcome.
And Jon needed the distraction more than any of them.
He had tried to steer his own thoughts as far away as he could from everything that had transpired at Winterfell, but the fear and guilt he felt in leaving Sansa to deal alone with murderers and betrayers in their own home had only heightened with each mile he put between him and his siblings.
Cousins. They're my cousins, now.
And my name is Jaehaerys.
The word still sounded horribly wrong, foreign and unfitting, no matter how many times he turned it around his head, forcing himself to adapt to it.
It did not belong with him.
And that wasn't even the worst of it. What was worse was that even his own name, the bastard name he had learned to don with pride, the name Ygritte breathed upon his lips when she came apart, warm and sweet, above him, urging him on, the name his bannermen had cheered as they put a crown on his brow, that name had become hateful to his own ears as well.
A sham. A lie.
He wasn't Jon Snow anymore, and he did not know how to be Jaehaerys either. He was stuck somewhere in the middle, flinching every time someone spoke his name aloud as though he had just been welted across the face.
Before leaving Winterfell, Arya told him that a name is not what makes a person who they are. There was unquestionable wisdom in her words, Jon had to recognise; the kind of common sense she had obviously acquired from experience, while she learned to survive, fight and gods knew what else in the crowded streets of Braavos. Arya used names as a disguise, to swap at will just like she would change clothes. He, on the other hand, felt as stark naked and helpless as a newborn babe, without it.
'Never forget what you are...' Tyrion Lannister had bid him the very first time they met, 'Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.'
But what should he do, now that the armour was gone?
He felt a coldness that had nothing to do with the gloom of the swamp pass right through him.
I can't dwell on it any longer. I will go mad.
He raised his sword high above his head one more time and plodded ahead.
Another half-day went by before they came to a halt; this time, Meera put a hand on his right shoulder and commanded them to be quiet, as she held her breath and searched with fleeting eyes the darkness ahead.
Into the still distance, the wailing sobs of an owl shivered between the dead branches.
Fast as lightning, the girl untied the rope around her waist and scrambled up the closest tree.
"Don't move!" she uttered tensely, perched on the edge, and answered the hooting with a similar call.
Suddenly the whole swamp, from every bog, hidden shrub and ghostly tree, seemed to stir and wake up, screeching with a thousand cry and one. Spooked, the horses neighed madly, baulking and writhing in the mud.
Without a second thought, Longclaw was at the ready; even in the almost complete obscurity, Jon could see Brienne and Jaime's twin blades glowing red and golden like fluttering embers stirred in a fire.
"Defend the King!" Davos hollered above the cacophony and Jon sensed arrows swiftly being pulled off from quivers and nocked on bowstrings with a whooshing sound, while the others moved as fast as the wetland allowed, closing their ranks around him.
TU-WHUUU, TU-WHUUU
Somewhere above their heads, Meera hooted again.
And then everything fell silent.
His sword held high before his face, Jon pivoted around, bracing himself for an attack. The rush of his own heartbeat pounded savagely in his ears, and he almost jumped out of his skin when Meera unexpectedly popped down in front of him.
"We're here!" she declared and pointed a finger toward the tangled trees.
"I ain't seeing nothing!" Anguy cried out.
The thick, grey foliage shuddered and shook apart like a giant rousing from a heavy slumber, and the muddy darkness unfolded before their very eyes: hundreds of lights emerged from the cold fog, an entire hidden city, like a beacon tearing up the night of the swamp.
There were stilt houses and smaller huts and buildings erected upon crannogs, above the trees, inside the trees, on the sturdy branches, leaning on stockades made of oak, reeds and bark as far as the eye could see.
Jon's jaw dropped.
Meera's green-brown eyes smiled up at him: "Welcome to Greywater Watch."
"Thank the fucking Gods!" Bronn proclaimed without ceremony and shouldered his way to the narrow, dry causeway mere feet from where they stood that - Jon now could see it very well - drew a serpentine path throughout the meadow.
The stale air soon filled with the men's whoops of joy and disbelief, and Jon joined in with a shaky laugh of relief of his own, before following in Bronn's squelching steps.
The seat of House Reed wasn't larger, nor more opulent, than the buildings around it, but it rose about three feet above water level, on a wide moving island, and its foundations rested upon the stump and roots of the most colossal weirwood tree Jon had ever seen. While everything else was tinged in hues of grey and green, the keep was a striking, moonlight-glittering white.
At the entrance, wrapped in moss-green leather, stood a short man with a long copper beard streaked with silver and hair a tangle of brown and gold that wouldn't have cut a poor figure upon the head of a wildling.
Meera sprinted ahead to meet him and threw her arms around his neck.
In between sobs, Jon could grasp only broken words, but he caught Bran's name, and Jojen's, the youngest Reed who died beyond the Wall helping his brother in his quest. And then Meera turned to him.
"I've brought him, Father," she sniffled. "Like I promised."
"Lord Reed," Jon greeted with a curt nod.
Howland Reed wordlessly stared at him with glazed eyes, transfixed, a shaky hand raised to Jon's face as though he meant to make certain he wasn't a ghost. He seemed torn between the impulse to hug him like he did just moments ago with his own daughter, and the formality of duty, which demanded he kneel to his King. In the end, he settled for seizing his shoulder in a somewhat stronger hold than Jon would have guessed, for such a small man.
"Good," Lord Howland muttered to himself, deeply moved. "Very good." His deep-green eyes flickered behind Jon's back, and only then he seemed to realise there were other people, beside him and Meera.
"Come inside, friends," he gesticulated hurriedly, as his guards opened a portcullis made of birch wood to let them in. "You'll find dry clothes, warm beds and fine food and drinks. Rest for a while," he added to him, a hand over his forearm, "then come and find me."
Jon lost sight of the rest of the group as soon as they crossed Greywater's main gate: his lodgings were situated right next to Meera's rooms, in the inner part of the wooden keep, where the crannog's uneven ground gently rose, following the twists and coils of the swollen roots below, as they forced their way across the earth. A monstrous snake stretching its whole length just under their feet, alive and growing still.
The room, although frugal and bare, was cosy and welcoming, and had a solemn mood lingering to it Jon couldn't quite place. Almost the entirety of the space was taken up by a bed carved from the convoluted shape of the ancient weirwood, the timber just as white as the heart tree in Winterfell's godswood.
Men's craftsmanship had fashioned the limb's irregularities into a smooth surface fit to peaceful sleep, yet, as he laid a careful hand over it, a thought struck him with sudden certainty.
This is Jojen's room.
The greenseer who put Bran on the path to become what he was now and who died in the cold lands beyond the Wall by his own sister's hands.
Did he dream about their fate in this very bed, before setting on his journey?
'Trees dream, too,' Bran told him once. 'And when they do, they whisper their songs of leaf and earth into the ears of the ones lonely enough to listen.'
Will I dream of her, that black-haired young girl crowned with a wreath of blue roses, if I lay down on it?, Jon wondered, retracting his hand as though burned.
Will I dream of past lives and sins, of future glories and deaths?
Will I see a glimpse of my own, just as Jojen must have, as well?
Truths and memories. Blood and grief.
The scars on his chest tingled disturbingly.
He was tired beyond words, but couldn't rest. Not now, when a constant uproar of doubts and fears was laying a furious siege upon his mind: the unshakeable conviction he felt when he took to the road was dwindling like light at the end of the day. Faces, both known and unknown, swam behind his closed eyelids. His father's pained expression as he said farewell to him with a promise he would never fulfil; Alys Karstark, looking lovely in Stark colours, her grey eyes smiling up at him as they danced; a woman risen from the fire, with purple eyes and silken hair the shade of a molten moon; and the clearest of all, Sansa's smart, resourceful face, crumpling under the weight of a sudden revelation... Dread twisted deep within Jon like a hundred blades... he had seen the emptiness in her eyes, the mute shock in the tightening of her lips when Bran told them...
He should have never left Winterfell.
He should have simply asked his brother to tell him everything about what had happened during the Rebellion. Begged him to make him understand through his visions. But even that, Jon knew, wouldn't have been enough.
He needed to hear the story from the living voice of someone who was there, who had heard her laughter, seen her tears. Held her dead body.
And yet, the idea of confronting the actual reality of his birth troubled him more than he cared to admit and brought about a scorching, irrational fury he didn't quite know how to quell.
His own reflection stared back at him from the basin of hot water prepared for his arrival, dirty, miserable and aching. Hollow.
Jon had looked and felt the same, after the Battle at Winterfell, and for many days after it, even when his bannermen, Ned Stark's bannermen, had acclaimed him King in the North. He had done his duty, ruled at the best of his abilities, tried to keep his people together, juggling his way through betrayals, recriminations, suspicions and quarrels, but there was always something gnawing at his heart, a sense of dissatisfaction, a craving, an ineffable disconnection between words and actions and feelings which baffled and left him wanting.
But now that the missing piece was, at last, within easy reach, he found himself cowering away, unwilling to take that final step.
There was a very peculiar kind of merciless horror to be found in the truth.
Are you that much of a craven, bastard?, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Tyrion's taunted him, and Jon was pushed back to a frank exchange of words across the fire, on the harsh road to the Wall. A talk about dragons, honour and the power of knowledge... Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it...
And Jaime... only a few weeks past, Jaime had urged him to move on, to take charge of his own life, and choose, for the first time, a path...
Back in Jojen's room, Jon snorted: the irony of having not one, but two Lannisters giving him life advice wasn't completely lost on him.
And the fact that they both had the right of it just added more salt on wounds.
There was no escaping this.
He plunged a cotton cloth into the lukewarm water and angrily scrubbed the dried mud and sweat off his face, then changed into clean boots and clothes, and went to face his demons.
Greywater Watch was as much a labyrinth as the swamp surrounding it was. Jon wouldn't be able to draw up a map of its inner areas if he tried: like the threads of a web, spreading across the meadow, there were wooden bridges connecting each part of the structure with the other buildings, and some of the passageways were cramped and so low Jon had to crouch a little not to bump his head.
Every now and then, the faces of crannogmen and women would flash in and out of the side passages, their eyes looking back at him with queer curiosity... green eyes, red eyes, and black ones and ones of molten gold...
After a while, he had the distinct feeling to be wandering in circles, and soon enough he came to a brusque halt in front of a blind spot.
"Are you lost, boy?"
He turned around, his grip on Longclaw's hilt, but it was just Howland Reed. The crannogman wasn't there a second ago. Jon frowned and did a double-take in the direction he was heading, his skin crawling.
"No, I..." His shoulders deflated slightly as a resigned sigh left his lips. "Perhaps a bit."
Lord Reed's thin mouth tilted up at the corner as he nudged his head to the side.
"Come. Follow me."
Jon complied. They reached a small, circular room with shadowcat pelts scattered on the floor and weaponry and shields hung on the wall; there was no hearth, but three braziers kept the mouldy cold from outside at bay. Lord Howland sent the guards away and gestured for him to sit at the carved wooden table, while he poured into a glass a generous fill of a drink so clear that Jon mistook it for water, at first.
It was not water.
Bowels liquefying, Jon succumbed to a magnificently unkingly fit of wheezing coughs while Lord Reed's rough, dappled face faded in and out of his watery vision.
"One of our best aged meads, made with herbs and bark," the old lizard-lion explained as way of apology. He quaffed down the contents of his own cup without so much as a pleased smack of his lips. "I bet it would put to shame even the fermented goat milk the wildlings are justly famous for."
"If I don't die of heartburn, I'll let them know," Jon croaked, glowering.
The strange man took a seat before him, his piercing eyes twinkling with something akin affection. But the more he stared at him the more the warmth in his expression turned into a green storm of anguish and woe, until his gaze wavered and dropped skittishly to his shaking hands.
"You must forgive me, but... You look astonishingly like her."
Nothing more than a whisper, pained and wobbly.
Jon swallowed hard, his throat suddenly gritty. He did not know how to counter that. Howland stood up nervously to refill his own cup.
"I knew you'd come, sooner or later. I've been getting ready for this conversation all my life, and yet I feel utterly out of my depth. You must have questions."
"Only one. Why?"
It came out more resentful than he had intended, but, at this point, Jon no longer cared for pleasantries.
"After my father…" his breath caught in his throat. He swallowed again. Bile, spite and hollow pain. "After Lord Eddard died, why didn't you write me? Why not say something, then?"
Reed contemplated him long and hard, choosing his next words with care.
"Because some truths did not bear saying, and some lies are necessary. Ned tried to protect you by sending you to the edge of the world, but the Wall was still an unforgiving, dangerous place; there were still many people who remembered the Rebellion, people who might have tried to hurt you, perhaps even kill you, had they known."
Jon couldn't help the bitter laugh that escaped him. If Lord Stark had meant to send him to the Wall to keep him from harm, well, that plan blew up in their faces in a rather spectacular way.
Pain from Olly's stabbing wound seared white-hot through him, and for a moment he was back at Castle Black, laying flat in the dirty snow, while his lungs filled with blood and darkness and cold.
"I had the right to know," he curtly said, sick and sullen.
"Aye, and don't think for a moment that the silence hasn't cost me," Howland retorted, colour rising to his cheeks. "It pained Ned as well, to lie to everyone, especially to you. I didn't agree with many of his choices, but I was loyal to him. He was my liege, and my best friend besides and I understood him, better than anyone. I think... I think a part of him believed he could still keep her alive in his mind, as long as nobody uttered a word about her, or the way she died."
For all his reluctance, this, at least, Jon didn't find difficult to believe. He remembered how sometimes his father's brow would cloud over while watching him; Jon always thought it was shame, for being reminded daily of that one past sin, festering on his honour like black mould upon a tree's root, but in truth it was a heartbreak so profound it could find relief nor absolution in nothing else but silence.
Cloaked in his loneliness, Ned Stark had grieved for his beloved sister all his life, while he ignored, or didn't want to see, that there was a child next to him, always a respectful step behind, who worshipped the very ground he walked on, and who missed her just as much as he did. A little boy who would have drunk in each and every word he would have spoken about her.
Jon had craved to hear stories about her for all his life and now he grieved for those memories only her brother could have shared, the memories that now were lost forever.
His eyes stung.
"We could've mourned her together," he rasped, and the grief he felt for her blended in his heart with the grief he still bore, despite everything, for the man he had called father for all his life.
"Oh, my dear boy," Howland Reed shook his head. "Ned wasn't the kind of man to let anyone share in his sorrow and weakness. He used honour as a shield, and when even that failed him, he drew the needed strength to do what he believed was right from his pain, and the love he felt for you. He wouldn't have wanted to burden you with that, as well."
He blinked back at him, blankly.
"Burden me?... Burden me?"
The fire he had bridled and curbed until that very moment snarled and bit like a savage beast and he soon found himself springing to his feet, his whole body shaking with fury.
"He let me believe my mother was some common girl he fucked and ditched! I thought she was a table wench he met somewhere in Dorne! Or worse."
How many times did he get into brawls with the lads at Winterfell, and later, with his fellow brothers in the Night's Watch, just for a jape, or a snigger, or a crude half-comment his ears picked over supper? A whore, they would call her, and Jon did believe them; how could he not? His father didn't provide him with any evidence, any weapon that could have helped him fight off the slanders.
"I didn't even know if she was still alive. He wouldn't even speak her name!"
His breath was coming out in shallow pants now, as though he had run a mile in the deep snow.
Howland patiently waited for his rage to subside.
"I haven't either," he then confessed softly. "For the past twenty-four years. Not once, since these arms held you for the first and only time. I swore an oath that day. An oath I'm going to break now. Lyanna..." His green eyes squeezed shut, those mere syllables acid tears dribbling over an open wound. "Lyanna Stark is your mother. You were born at the Tower of Joy, and she only had enough strength in her to give you a name and rock you to sleep for a short while, before dying."
She has held me.
Jon hopelessly dug deeper into his memory, hunting for a scent - withered roses and dried blood - for the ghost of that long-forgotten caress, but the trail of her warmth upon his skin was gone and he couldn't bring it back, not even as an echo in his own imagination.
His empty hands balled into fists.
He had nothing.
"Did she suffer?"
The words were wrenched from between clenched teeth and hung there, horrific and inconceivable, suspended in the anguished space connecting their heartbreaks.
Sickness burned right through him, unrestrained.
Jon didn't really want to know, but like a child scratching a scab that wouldn't stop itching, he could not stop himself from asking.
"I think... I think she took great comfort in knowing you would live to become the man you are today," the crannogman conceded cautiously.
That wasn't even remotely enough.
His mind tortured him with morbid images of her, in that small tower, stifling under the scorching Dornish sun, fighting a losing battle in the birthing bed, her body broken, the pale face screwed up in pain, cold sweat and blood soaking the sheets... the smell of life and death filling the air around her... Was she scared? Was she alone? Why was she alone? Why wasn't there a maester, a midwife, to help her out?
Why nobody helped her?
He realised he must have said that last bit aloud for Howland Reed had grasped his shoulders and was talking to him; his lips were moving, but, through the haze of his own agony, it took Jon some time to focus back on the words' meaning.
"Jon, listen to me. Listen! There was nothing we could do. Your mother was brave right up to the end. Her last thoughts were for you. Everything we did after, all the lies and secrets, we did it out of love, to protect you. You were the only thing left of her we had." His voice came apart at the seams, splitting into a half-sob.
Something raw and blazing ripped its way to the surface, floating in Howland's moss-green eyes as though beseeching him to understand.
His breath hitching in shock, Jon paused and frowned down at him, realisation dawning in his mind.
"You were in love with her..."
Howland's arms went slack to his sides.
His head and shoulders shrunk in as though he was either trying to take up even less space than he already was, or bracing himself, expecting Jon to take offence at the temerity and hit him, as absurd as it might have seemed. When he spoke again, in shy, hushed murmurs, he sounded genuinely lost, almost ashamed by the admission.
"It was difficult not to. Lyanna was… she was a dream of spring. She was the dream of many. Hard and rare as Valyrian steel. Spirited and funny and forgiving. She was free and stubborn, wild and brisk like a mountain creek. Fierce like a storm... Every time she entered a room, I just couldn't look away."
There were so much longing and adoration in his tone, his eyes, that Jon bowed his head, suddenly self-conscious, his wrath thawing into a dull bone-deep ache.
"In the end, we were all out of her league… none of us could have kept her. Not me, nor Robert, and certainly not that silver prince of hers."
He spat the last words like it were an insult.
"What happened at Harrenhal?" Jon asked after a while.
"She saved my life."
Howland moved past him, to the wall where all the nondescript shields hung, dusty and neglected, and removed the shabbiest one, a pine-and-leather round shield banded with iron around the edges. Time and disuse had left the paint cracking and mostly fading on the sigil, but Jon could still guess the outline of a weirwood tree, white on black, and the sea of crimson leaves that seemed to be stirred by an invisible wind.
Something in its blazon nudged oddly at his memory... there were carvings on the tree's bark, a crease almost like a laughing mouth...
"The Knight of the Laughing Tree... This was his shield!" he whispered, enthralled.
Reed arched an eyebrow, in mild surprise. "You know the story?"
Jon nodded vigorously.
Of course he did.
In his childhood's fervid dreams of glory, the Harrenhal mystery knight stood valiant and strong right next to other equally celebrated champions of the people... the Knight of Tears, one of his favourites, who named sad and beautiful Naerys his Queen of Love and Beauty... Barristan the Bold, at the time a green lad of ten, who jousted against the Prince of Dragonflies at the tourney of Blackhaven... Baelon Targaryen, the Silver Fool, still a squire himself, who unhorsed in a row a golden tree, a red apple, a white sun upon an orange sky and three oak leaves, and won his spurs the same day...
Yet, to a lad of seven, the Knight of the Laughing Tree surpassed in his legend everyone else, for his true identity was never discovered, to the point that many people in the North believed him to be a myth. When they were young, both he and Robb thought the knight had been Ned Stark himself, only to be harshly scolded when they questioned him about it.
But now the evidence of his existence was right in front of him, and Jon felt as giddy and starstruck as his seven-year-old self.
He raised the shield to the light of the braziers, perusing each and every chink where the lances must have shattered in the effort to drive its owner from his saddle, in his ears the vibrant clangour of horse hooves launched forward into a wild gallop, and the warlike cheering of the crowd.
"Harrenhal's mystery knight."
"Not a knight at all, I'm afraid."
As engrossed as Jon was with the relic in his hands it took him a while to really grasp the implications of his host's remark, but when the actual meaning of the words hit him, he nearly dropped the shield to the floor. Shock and astonishment won over his rage and grief, and rendered him speechless for a moment.
He looked at the shield. Then at Howland Reed.
"It was her?" he blurted out, gaping. His eyes must have been as wide as saucers, comically so, because for the first time the room resounded with Lord Reed's hearty laughter.
"What you must understand about your mother is that she couldn't stand any form of injustice," he told him, after Jon took his seat back at the table, his hands still clutching the shield as though it were some precious heirloom.
"When I went to Harrenhal I was quite inexperienced. Far away from home for the very first time... of course I was bound to get into trouble the moment I put my boots on the castle's grounds. So when she caught some squires beating me, she stepped up in my defence. Three against one. You should have seen their faces when she knocked all of them into the dust without breaking a sweat. A skinny slip of a girl of barely five and ten!"
His eyes crinkled at the corner at the reminiscence and Jon joined in with a small awed chuckle of his own. He could almost see her, wearing jerkin and breeches, her tousled black hair loosely tied up and cheeks flaming red from indignation. In his mind, she looked less like the woeful woman he often dreamed of, and much more like Arya.
"She introduced me to her brothers and father straight away and invited me to sit with her family at the feast, that same evening." Howland's wrinkled face darkened into a scowl of deep aversion. "And that's where she met him."
If at first Jon thought he might have imagined the bitter venom twisting his voice at the mere mention of Rhaegar Targaryen, now jealousy and hostility were as plain as day.
He wouldn't even call him by his name.
His eyes unfocused and lost in some faraway memory, the lizard-lion raised again the glass to his lips and gulped down half its content, then crooked his head to the side like an owl and considered him coldly.
"Do you sing?"
Jon shook his head, slightly confused by the sudden change of topic.
"Not really."
Back in the day, the girls in Winter Town would roar with laughter at his dismal attempts, and even Robb and Theon couldn't carry a tune to save their own life, to Septa Mordane's great dismay and to Arya's greatest amusement. Sansa was the nightingale of the household.
"Well," Howland clicked his tongue, a loathing as cold as death seeping in each word, "the Prince of Dragonstone was exceptionally good at it. Some say he should have been born a bard, instead of heir to the Iron Throne. Would have spared a lot of misery to the realm." Another long swallow. "I don't remember what he sang. Jenny of Oldstones, perhaps, or Alysanne, or something equally mournful and depressing. Lyanna wept. And got really angry when your uncle Benjen mocked her for it. And that was it. Nothing would have come out of it, were it not for what happened later that same night. It was her idea, although Ben helped. It started innocently enough. They had seen the three squires serving their lords at dinner and Lyanna wanted to give them a lesson they wouldn't forget. So after dark we sneaked into Lord Whent's armoury and nicked different bits and pieces of armour. No one was really using them anyway. And like that, the Knight of the Laughing Tree was born."
He fondly stroked the round, battered shield. A caress that sailed across the wide seas of time to reach her.
"We were young and stupid, and Lyanna was... it was nigh impossible to make her change her mind, once she was set on something. She had no real training in jousts or combat and could have hurt herself, but the old gods must have been watching, because by the end of the day the three knights had been defeated in the list and their horses and armour had changed their ownership... and the crowd... gods, the crowd! The commons went mad for her!"
His enthusiasm was contagious and Jon's heart was briefly swept off by a wave of pride at the thought of her, victorious and inexorably devoted to her principles to the point of foolishness, and with a jolt of the sweetest, most perfect contentment, he realised there was something of himself in her, too, after all.
"Lyanna became a hero to the smallfolk, that day," Howland went on. "But the king saw treason and enemies everywhere, so naturally when the mystery knight didn't come up to collect his winnings, he became suspicious. He feared the knight had been sent by his enemies to gain the people's favour and stir them against him, so he ordered the prince to bring him to justice. In the middle of the night, a hunting expedition was arranged, but instead of boars or stags, they unknowingly chased a stupid boy and a reckless girl who were only trying to put back in the armoury an old shield and some shabby armour pieces without being seen."
"But the knight's identity remained a secret! How did you run away?"
"We didn't," Lord Reed pointed out. "The prince caught us. We tried to cross the lake and get to the Isle of Faces, so that the hounds might lose our scent, but I was injured and Lyanna wouldn't leave me behind. We clambered on an old ash tree, out of sight. But the branch over which Lyanna was poised snapped. She quite literally fell from the sky, right into his arms. When he realised who she really was, he let us go with the promise he wouldn't turn her over to the King. He kept the shield. I have no idea what lies he fed to his father, but Aerys seemed appeased and didn't pursue us any further." His head dropped to his chest in hopelessness. "By then, the damage was already done. For the following five days, Lyanna behaved queerly: she would sneak out for hours, making up excuses to go riding on the lake road, but she wouldn't take anyone with her. No one seemed to pay heed. They all had their own business to mind. Ned was completely smitten with Ashara Dayne. Brandon was competing in the joust and would spend the better part of the day loitering around, drinking with Robert Baratheon and Ser Richard Lonmouth and the better part of the nights bedding handmaidens and serving girls alike. But I was worried. So on the sixth day, I followed her."
The green eyes lingered, painfully haunted, over the shield. His lips pressed into a bloodless, unwilling line, as though forbidding him to say more. A sense of decency, perhaps. Or maybe just mortification at remembering his own heartbreak.
Jon reached for the pitcher next to him and filled Howland's cup afresh.
"They were just talking," the old man resumed, after taking a mouthful. "Strolling around the lake's shores like two friends who haven't seen each other in ages. There was absolutely nothing untoward about it, but... I knew. The next day... You know what happened then."
The moment when all the smiles died.
"He rode past his pregnant wife and put a crown of blue winter roses in Lyanna's lap," Jon finished for him.
Five days.
Five days to fall in love and tear a kingdom asunder.
Took us even less than that, Ygritte's husky voice quipped. The heart wants what the heart wants, and some things are out of our hands, Jon Snow.
He shut his eyes and when he reopened them, Lord Reed was slouched over, with his elbows upon his knees and both his hands grabbing his head in despair.
"Your grandfather was... raving mad," he quavered, his fists tearing at his hair. "Everybody in the castle and the camp outside heard the shouts that night. Brandon wanted satisfaction for the insult, but he was blaming her in truth. Accused her of bringing dishonour to the Starks and Baratheons by leading on the prince. Started calling her foul names... while Robert... Robert kept drinking with that chilling smile on his stupid face and did not say a single word... she stormed off, and next day we took our leave from the king and left Harrenhal in a hurry."
A desolate, strangled sob heaved his tiny body as he stared vacantly at the loose strands of brown-grey hair in his fists.
"I was meant to return home, but Lord Rickard requested my presence at Winterfell for the next few months, until Brandon's marriage. I believe he'd hoped I could keep Lyanna distracted long enough for her to forget about Harrenhal and peacefully come to terms with her own already arranged future, and for a while the plan worked."
Howland smiled, wistful, through his tears.
"We were thick as peas in a pod. Lyanna, Ben, fiery Maege Mormont, and me. From dawn to dust we would roam over the castle grounds, around the Wolfswood. Sometimes we'd spar together. Lyanna was vicious, and quite the sore loser. She taught me how to ride and I taught her and Ben how to make nets and three-pronged spears to catch frogs and fish. We were the terror of the household! In the evenings Lord Stark would meet us in his solar, where Vayon Poole lectured us, threatening to send Maege back to Bear Island and me to Greywater unless we'd behaved ourselves, and so we showed our best contrite faces and apologised in earnest."
Jon didn't have a hard time imagining that. After all, it was not that long ago he stood in Howland's shoes, being scolded himself. Stealing treats from the kitchen... hiding harmless grass snakes under Septa Mordane's bedcovers... dumping snow unto the guardsmen passing through the gate... locking Jeyne Poole up inside a huge iron chest after he coated her in honey and flour, because she neighed in Arya's face during supper - and there was that one time when he, Robb and Theon, perched just out of sight on the worn gargoyles of the First Keep, pissed on the heads of three Umber cunts who had been rude to Hodor the evening before... Every nasty little prank you could think of, he probably did that too.
"And next day you were at it again," Jon said with a knowing smirk.
"Worse than the day before!" Howland avowed, cackling like a proud crow. "Old Nan absolutely loathed me. She was convinced I was some kind of bog devil sent to Winterfell to be the bane of her existence and corrupt the soul of her perfect, darling girl. But it was all worth it. Every day, I made Lya laugh. She had a laugh... that could rouse the dead."
The sparkling grin quivered on his lips, faltering into a grimace. He paused, eyes closed, and Jon held his breath with him, straining his ear, but the only sounds in the room were the red-hot coals crackling and snapping into the braziers and his own heart, thundering against his ribcage.
Reed clenched his jaw, struggling, as fresh tears brimmed his eyes.
"She wasn't happy, not really. I knew she didn't want to marry Robert. She had begged her father to call off the marriage, but a Stark never takes back a given word. It sickened me. I didn't know how to help her. We often stayed up late, at night, talking, imagining a different future. She wanted to flee to Essos. Found her own mummers' troupe and travel through the Free Cities with it. 'I already have who's going to write me beautiful songs,' she would say, and I was so stupidly smitten with her I couldn't even realise who she was talking about. They had been writing to each other in secret, for months."
The chair scraped against the hardwood floor as Howland rose and started pacing, his steps urgent and rushed, and Jon leaned forward, on the edge of his seat, his sweating hands clutching protectively his mother's shield on his lap.
"And then spring finally came, and we took to the Kingsroad again. Brandon was to be married to Catelyn Tully in Riverrun and from there we were expected to ride the rest of the way to Storm's End, where Robert Baratheon would drape a black-and-golden cloak around Lya's shoulders.
As one of your grandfather's most loyal bannermen, and still unmarried myself, I was part of the wedding party. Your uncle was already in Riverrun, but he rode up the River Road to meet us. Ned and Robert were travelling down from the Eyrie with old Lord Arryn, and were supposed to join the group at the Crossroads Inn a few days later.
We were maybe a two days' ride from Harrenhal, when Lyanna suddenly disappeared. We didn't fret, at first. It wasn't uncommon for her to ride away when she wanted to be alone. But the night went by and when by midday she was still missing, Lord Rickard sent a searching party… We followed her trail almost to the Antlers and stopped to a tavern on the road. There, one of the serving wenches mentioned a girl matching Lyanna's description. It had struck her as odd, a young woman travelling alone with seven men. One for each of the Gods, she japed. They were all dressed in black and grey capes and were clearly trying not to raise unwanted attention, but the wench told us that they carried themselves like knights, and paid her quite generously.
She couldn't say in which direction they rode afterwards, but what we heard was enough."
Jon was appalled. "She arranged the whole thing? And the others still believed she has been abducted?"
"No one really did. But Brandon was a prideful man. He'd sooner delude himself with a lie, as uncomfortable as it might have been, than face an uglier truth where his own little sister, by all accounts an honest, virtuous woman, the gem of the family, hoodwinked them all and eloped on her own accord with a married man, and the crown prince at that."
Howland Reed fell silent, then, and Jon didn't really need to press him for more. He could easily fill in the blanks by himself... His uncle storming inside the Red Keep in a bloodthirsty rage, shouting for the Prince's head, Aerys arresting him and his companions on charges of treason - a trap, really, to lure in their lord fathers and execute them all in cold blood... Rickard Stark cooked inside his own armour, while his first-born strangled himself to death in the futile attempt to save him... in the deathly stillness of the rest of the court and of the two Kingsguards who stood and watched and did nothing to put an end to the torture.
Only young Ethan Glover was spared, to make a witness out of him.
The witness talked, and the Rebellion caught fire.
That was a horror story even he knew. Not from Lord Stark himself, or Lady Catelyn, of course, but from whispers and gossip caught on his trips in Winter Town or from the Glovers and the Cerwyn lads, who shared their childhood summers with him and Robb and Theon. From Barbrey Dustin, who was rumoured to have been secretly in love with Brandon and still held a grudge to the Starks for her husband's death, or Ser Rodrick Cassel, who had mourned his brother till his dying breath; Jon even heard Denys Mallister, commander of the Shadow Tower, speaking ruefully of the nephew he lost to Aerys' madness... But that was about it. To the eyes of a green boy of four and ten these tales were nothing more than sad reminiscences of old people grieving for their lost youth. Jon never made a great deal out of it. Why would he? It didn't touch him. It wasn't his story... After all, he had been spared nearly all the pain of such losses: his own father had returned from the war, with some deep scars that would never heal, sure, but still alive nonetheless, and his mother... whether she was a whore or a highborn lady, how could he miss what he never had?
No. Jon knew his story. Knew his place. The Bastard of Winterfell. His truth lay somewhere else. Or so he believed.
When had this conviction stopped being enough?, Jon wondered now, while he stared into Howland Reed's bloodshot, hollow eyes and tried to make sense of everything he learned.
I still know nothing, Ygritte, but a little less than yesterday.
One remaining thing didn't add up with the rest of the story, however.
"How did you know where to find her?"
What little blood was on Howland's face drained away as he stilled. If the cold sweat glistened upon his gaunt features were any indication, the crannogman clearly did not expect the question, and seemed troubled, afraid to speak, even.
But now that the veil of deception had been lifted, Jon was determined to get to the bottom of it.
"Lord Reed." Thankfully his voice didn't waver and Jon recognised in it the same clement authority he often heard in Ned Stark's voice whenever he imparted orders. "Answer me."
Their eyes met.
"Because she wrote me."
Heart thrumming in his throat, Jon watched as the lizard-lion drew out a worn folded piece of parchment from his jerkin and placed it on the table, mere inches from his fingers.
He stared at it, frozen.
The paper was dry and yellowed, and when he attempted to smooth it out - gentle, gentle - the crisp bits at the corners and along the edges crumbled into a grainy powder, like brittle bones giving way to age and decay.
It was nothing more than a draft, dotted with ink blots, as though she didn't have the time to write a fairer, more legible copy. The handwriting was a bit angular and cramped, shaken, and here and there words and entire phrases had been hurriedly crossed out with thick, angry strokes, where her tempestuous thoughts had brusquely faltered or changed direction altogether; in a few places, the quill had rammed into the paper so furiously it had torn it.
None of it mattered. This letter belonged to Lyanna Stark. These were her words, her thoughts, her hopes and fears, and Jon tenderly cupped it in his hands as if it were her very beating heart.
My dearest Howl, she had begun, and his soul cracked as though made of glass.
He skimmed through it, once, twice, then with a frustrated groan started all over again, willing the blurred black signs to stop whirling before his eyes and take a shape and a pattern he could concentrate over...
My dearest Howl,
I have to be quick about it, I'm not supposed to write to anyone. It's not safe. But I fear it might be my only chance to say goodbye.
You must not tell a living soul what you're about to read, not even to my brothers. Ben is still so very young, and Ned... honour compels him to stand by Robert and avenge Brandon and Father. They wouldn't understand. But you will. You were with me when everything began.
I am somewhere in Dorne.
Locked in a half-tumbledown tower hidden deep in the mountains like one of those princesses Maege and I always made jokes about! How the tides have turned!
I know what you're thinking in that thick head of yours, but I am NOT in need of saving.
I chose this.
Know that I am in the best of hands and my prince has done everything in his power to ensure my safety and well-being, should things take a turn for the worse.
Rhaegar left for King's Landing a sennight ago; we know a reckoning is near. He wants to make some big changes, as soon as the war is won. His confidence both comforts and terrifies me. Since he went away, my nights have been plagued with horrible nightmares.
I'm trying to be brave, but I feel so terribly alone, and I miss you all so much my heart bleeds!
I long for Winterfell.
The peace of the godswood. Nan's tales and Maege's adorable pig-like laughter. Our games by the pond. Even Poole's toady face and Gage's curses when he chased us throughout the courtyard with his big wooden spoon, after we stole from the kitchen the blackberry-and-cheese pastries you're so fond of.
I miss it all.
I hope I will be allowed to come back home someday.
As far away and detached from everything as I am now, I feel the world crumbling around me. And before this is over I fear our folly will demand for other sacrifices to be made.
More and more each day, my thoughts and prayers are with the Princess of Dragonstone, whom I realise we have wronged beyond forgiveness, and those two innocent children who aren't supposed to pay for our wrongdoings.
I regret the hurt that I caused but, gods have mercy, I don't regret this.
I can't.
I am about to become a mother, too.
Mayhaps that's the real reason why I'm reaching out to you.
Rhaegar hopes for a girl. Silly man. He even has the name ready. Some foolish line he read on a parchment somewhere, talking about a three-headed dragon. I guess he's going to be in for a bit of a disappointment, because I saw him in my dreams.
My beautiful boy. With hair as black as a raven's wing, and the heart in his gentle eyes.
He will be king one day.
I'm not sure what to make of it.
As I'm writing this, he's pounding on my belly. Wants to make his presence known. Stubborn, like a true Stark.
I know you're there, my love. I can't wait to meet you and tell you how much wanted and loved you were, from the very start.
Please, Howl, please, if I won't be there to remind him, make sure he knows. Every day of his life.
I love you.
I'm sorry.
Lya
His thumb traced the contours of her signature, that dear name he had overlooked for all his life, and pictured her fingers, smudged with ink, slender yet calloused due to riding and archery drills, resting in the same spot where now his own did.
He was already with her, loved and wanted, when her hand had scribbled out this note, and her wonder and joy, the heart-pounding trepidation that slowly swelled in tune with her body, were a balmy kiss upon his wounds. But he could taste her fear, too... that gloomy premonition of death, like a rotten fruit in her mouth...
"I've betrayed her," Howland sobbed somewhere to his left. "I've betrayed her and I lied to Ned. I told him I've got the information from a greenseer of the bogs, and he was so distraught by that point that he didn't even question me. We reached her just in time."
Jon flinched. A sudden annoyance at the other man's presence crawled under his skin and he had to fight off the impulse to scream at him to just shut up. Every word grated on his nerves, on his thoughts. Having someone else's pain intruding into his own was unbearable.
He wanted to be alone with her.
To have her for himself, for awhile longer.
"I'm sorry, Jon. I'm sorry I couldn't keep her last wish. I've begged Ned to leave you with me. After all, he was newlywed, with a babe on the way, and I... I had nothing. No ties, no family yet. I knew Cat would never find it in her heart to love you like one of her own, so I swore to him that I would have instead. I would have raised you with all the love I could never give to Lya. But he said that Stark blood ran through your veins, and that your rightful place was at Winterfell. So he took you. And I took the shield. And so the lie began."
Jon stared back at his mother's spidery handwriting, as he slowly began to understand that, in the end, it wasn't a forbidden love, or the labours of a difficult childbirth that truly killed Lyanna Stark.
Honour did.
That same honour Jon had valued above everything else and held into the palm of his hands like something precious and easily breakable that needed constant tending through deeds and words, to grow and thrive.
A distorted perception of it, where the only thing that truly mattered was not duty, or loyalty to oaths and family, but reputation; a hollow skeleton being fed to the greedy hypocrisy of an entire realm like a putrescent corpse of a once-valiant king feasted upon by crows.
Honour and reputation had become a prison which still trapped his mother, long after her death. Nothing good came out from her attempt of being true to her heart; that kind of reckless courage couldn't be rewarded if not with shame and humiliation.
And his father, Ned Stark... he had become the conniving accomplice in the destruction of his sister's memory and true character, when he let Robert Baratheon sacrifice the she-wolf's fierceness on the altar of his own arrogance and scorn.
Lyanna had become the sorrowful maiden kidnapped and raped by the evil tyrant, the trite and vapid heroine in one of those tragic tales Sansa avidly devoured as a child. The spirited woman made of flesh and blood, the free woman who chose her own destiny had died twice, so that he, Jon, could live.
The fingers that still gripped the parchment had gone numb. His mind was numb as well, and everything hurt.
But his eyes remained mercilessly dry.
A sense of loss deeper than anything he had ever felt before had swallowed any other emotion.
The whole ordeal had left him drained and physically ill.
He was sickened by his father-turned-uncle, by Robert Baratheon and his conceit, by Rhaegar Targaryen for getting himself killed. And yes, some part of him resented Lyanna, too, as abominable the very idea might have been.
And this broken man, this old, tired man in front of him, with pain, and guilt, and the weight of lies and secrets engraved on his worn face, weeping and weeping and weeping and begging him, and her, to forgive him (and how dared he, when Jon couldn't shed a single tear), this ragged lord who must have been about the same age as Ned Stark but looked ten times older... Jon despised and pitied him in equal measure.
She would have forgiven him.
The realisation came to him naturally, like waking up after a full night of much-needed, refreshing sleep.
Yet, his lips remained stubbornly sealed, and Jon was stunned to find in himself such unexpected, petty cruelty.
Where did it come from? Why torture a man whose conscience and memories were clearly punishment enough?
He saved your life. Forgive him!' a voice of steel demanded from within.
A few well-chosen words would have been enough to ease his soul.
Tension knotted at the pit of his stomach.
I can't. Not now.
Carefully Jon folded his mother's letter and tucked it in his grey doublet, instead of giving it back to Reed. Then he rose to his feet in deathly silence, purposefully ignoring the man's despairing expression.
"I thank you for your hospitality, my lord. My men and I will leave at first light. A long and tiring journey awaits us. Make sure our steeds are well-rested and our supplies set to go," he instructed stiffly, then gave a sharp nod toward the table.
"I'll take my mother's shield with me."
Howland Reed blenched in shock, his face disfigured as though Jon had gutted him on the spot.
'Don't do this, sweetling. You're leaving him with nothing', the same voice pleaded with him, softer now.
Burdened with sadness.
Jon ignored that, too, and strode to the door.
Despite the small, cramped space booming with cheers and chants and laughter, the feast was a somewhat gloomy affair.
Jon had put on a polite smile, broken bread with the crannogmen, shared their salt and mead, and nodded in acknowledgement when mugs and tankards were raised to his health. He did everything a good liege was supposed to do and couldn't really resent these people's joyful merrymaking: after all, it was not every day Greywater Watch got to house a king under its moving roof.
But, next to him, Howland Reed ate and drank as though everything he put in his mouth were poison. He went through dinner like a wraith haunting a graveyard, and Jon felt a stab of guilt each time he met his blank eyes, uncomfortably aware of how they seemed to linger, as though drawn by an invisible force, at the spot under his coat where his mother's letter was pressed against his heart, heavy as lead.
Soon food turned stale in his mouth, as well.
He tarried only long enough to express his gratitude to House Reed for the generous and warm welcome, then, in the middle of second courses, he claimed tiredness and excused himself from the table.
Jaime's eyes, vigilant and silent, followed him to the door, just like they did throughout the whole evening; a stern protectiveness tinged with an anxious energy that put Jon ill at ease. He wasn't ready to have that particular conversation with him and didn't need his sympathy. Not tonight.
The mist covered his tracks well enough as he wandered over almost to the edge of the village, stopping on one of the many retractable wooden bridges overlooking the marsh.
On the muddy waters, slender boats of light timber soundlessly slid in and out the fog, the sole hint of their eerie presence the small light of the oil lamps on the prow, glittering like fireflies.
Jon knew that, as soon as his party left this swamp, the keep's position would change again: the wooden decks anchoring building to building and crannog to crannog would be raised and Greywater Watch would float away like a dream at the edge of sunrise and disappear once again before friends and foes alike could grasp it.
Bronn was wrong. There was an elusive, melancholic beauty in it, Jon mused, and a soothing stillness in hues of green and grey that helped quieten his mind.
"Is dinner not to your taste?"
He turned, startled, a resigned smirk replacing his frown as Meera Reed joined him on the parapet.
"Quite the opposite," he joked. "I never thought there could be so many succulent ways to cook frogs!"
"And you still haven't tried our smoked lizard-lion. Secret recipe. Worthy of a King."
Jon leaned heavily on the wooden rail with a weary sigh. "Please, drop the title. We're way past it, don't you think?"
"You're right, I reckon," Meera shrugged. "Did you know we are milk siblings?"
Her wild curls bobbed up and down enthusiastically at his arched eyebrows.
"A wet nurse from Dorne," she elaborated, beaming. "Lord Stark took her in his service when you were born. Ten months later she was sent here to look after me, and then my brother. Her name was Wylla."
Wylla. The name had a dimly familiar ring to it. Where did he hear it? Winterfell, presumably. Did she choose to leave on her own, or did Lord Stark want her gone, like every other memory that tied him to that thrice-damned tower in the mountains?
His gaze searched through the descending mist, as if expecting to see her shade emerging from the bogs.
The gentle pressure of Meera's hand upon his arm, so real and comforting, nearly undid him and Jon knew what she was about to say before the words were out.
"She died. Many years ago. The same Greywater fever that nearly took Jojen too. I'm sorry."
As ludicrous as it was to mourn the absence of someone he didn't even know existed until now, with each new revelation another bleeding gash opened on his already crippled soul. An empty, sunken space soaking up all the light.
Another missing piece to his own story Jon would never get back.
The injustice of it all tasted like bile, sour milk and tears.
"Did she know who I really was?"
Her brown eyes became impossibly soft.
"I couldn't tell. She often talked about you, though. Mostly to draw unfair comparisons with our apparently deranged infancy. 'De most peaceful babe I ʼave everrr seen! ʼe slept an' sucklet. Slept an' sucklet. Not at all like you two wee monsterrrs, keeping me up all night!' You were a hard act to follow. I grew up hating you, to be quite honest!"
Her imitation of the Dornish drawl was so silly and amusing that he found himself quietly sniggering, despite his morose mood.
"There." She pointed at his face, with a triumphant gleam in her eyes. "That's what was missing through supper."
An embarrassed flush crept up his neck, past the furry collar of his cloak. The girl disregarded it and stared him down, impassive. "I know you're angry with my father."
"Meera, I..."
She briskly held up both her hands, palms forward.
"I don't blame you! I probably would be too. It's quite a lot to take in. I always suspected there was something he wouldn't say. A daughter learns to read her father's silences. Learns to cope with his weaknesses, eventually. Sometimes it's painful when you realise they're humans, after all. That they can make mistakes even when they think they're protecting us. And some things, well... some things will always be hard as hell to understand. Maybe they aren't meant to be. Or perhaps they can only once we become parents in turn."
Her sad little smile, so open in the complete acceptance of circumstances that were as far from ideal as anything, for her as well, made him want to crawl into a hole and hide forever in shame. She must have realised her father was in love with Lyanna Stark when he married her mother, and that he was still in love with her after all this time. And yet, there was no trace of bitterness, nothing resembling the blinding anger that threatened to choke him up with every breath he took.
Meera wasn't asking him to forgive her father, and her words were the only thing in the devastating wreckage of the last eighteen days that actually made perfect sense.
He envied her wisdom. The self-assurance that made her rise above all this. Above all the tragedies his family more or less indirectly had caused hers.
She didn't let grief or disappointment for an unexpected truth steer her away from her good nature, from that unbelievable sense of duty she felt toward the ones she loved.
There was a lesson to be had, here, Jon thought.
Meera was younger than him when she left the safety of her own home and put her destiny in Bran's hands.
Her steadfast trust never wavered. Not when Bran's dreams led them across the dangerous uncharted lands beyond the Wall. Not even when Jojen died to follow those dreams.
Anyone else would hold a grudge, at the very least.
Not her.
Nor to him or his brother. Not against her father just now.
She must have been the most selfless, most forgiving person Jon had ever met.
He had no idea how she managed that.
"Bran didn't send you away out of ingratitude," Jon blurted out, in an awkward attempt to perhaps give back a small portion of the comfort she offered him so bountifully. "I hope you know that. He only wants to protect you."
"Funny," Meera scoffed. "It's usually the other way around." Her gaze got lost in the misty marshland, her lips twitching as she chased some reminiscence from another time. But when she raised her eyes back to him, jaw set in a hard, determined line, the hair on his nape prickled in alarm.
"My father's men will escort you safely through the final stretch of the swamp, but the worst of it is behind us. You don't need me to follow you to Dragonstone. I must go where I'm truly needed. My place is at Winterfell," she said with a finality that brooked no argument.
Jon immediately baulked at the prospect. She wouldn't be persuaded otherwise, not with the way her expression had hardened into one of obstinate boldness. He had seen that same look of steel hundred of times, wielded like a sharp blade by his sisters, to know the struggle would probably just leave his pride bruised and battered.
But he feared for her.
If Bran had bid her away despite the depth of his feelings and more so at the cost of hurting her, it could only mean the alternative did not even bear thinking about.
"My brother would never forgive me if I gave you leave to go."
"It's not for you to decide! And it's not up to him either!" Meera bristled. "Sometimes the walker chooses the path. Some other time, it's the other way around."
"What?"
"It's something Jojen said to me, the morning we left Greywater Watch." She tutted at his bewildered look, grabbed his elbow and made him turn his attention back to the swamp. "Look at those wooden bridges and walking planks. Our destiny is bound with the destinies of others. Hundreds of connected paths, just like these crannogs. This is the whole point. I made a choice when I left. And I kept making that choice every time doubts weakened my mind and body along the way. When we went beyond the Wall, when the Night King found us, when we lost Jojen, and Hodor and Summer! With each step I took, I swore to protect Bran, and no matter how far I am, my choices will always bring me back. He is the crannog I'm bound to."
It took Jon a second or two to really come to terms with the staggering fact that he couldn't do anything to stop her, and that neither was his place. Meera had every right to decide for herself, and he wouldn't belittle and demean her courage, by doing the same exact thing other men had done to his mother.
In another lifetime we might have been raised as brother and sister.
The thought, for some reason, brought a smile to his face.
"This is the path you choose, then?" he asked, overwhelmed and impossibly proud of her.
"It is. And this goes for you, as well. Each one of us has a path to follow, Jon Snow. Even when it's winding and strange and fraught with unspeakable dangers, even when it looks like a snake coiling in itself, so that the end looks pretty much like the beginning, and you feel like you haven't moved at all, there are no wrong turnings. The only thing that matters in the end is to keep walking."
A gloomy morning welcomed them with a frost and a quick flurry of snow that soon turned into an irksome sleet by the time Jon and the others had gathered in front of the keep's main gate. The others were only half surprised to know that Meera wouldn't travel with them to the Crownlands. Despite the fact that the girl had more experience at raw survival than all of them combined and had oft proved that she definitely was more than capable of looking after herself, Brienne and Davos both took turns in recommending her caution, clucking like two mother hens with their stray duckling, and even Bronn, in his usual surly way full of cursing and profanities, couldn't keep his most overly protective side hidden for long and bade her take care and stay safe. A good ten minutes later, after much huffing and eyes-rolling, her patience finally snapped and she told him to piss off, least he wish to leave with a black eye and fewer teeth.
"I pity my brother. Between you and the girls, he's going to have his hands full of stubborn, disobedient women," Jon quipped when he finally got to say his farewell.
Under her father's tear-softened eyes, Meera fiercely wrapped him in a hug and kissed his cheek.
He clung to her, grateful, and blinked back the sudden rush of emotion that clenched his throat. What good would it do, after all, if he started fussing over her as well, beside earn him a well-deserved, annoyed kick to the shin? Whatever fear and reservation he had, Jon bit it down, but secretly sent a prayer to his father's gods that she'd be safe with his siblings behind Winterfell's high walls.
Over the turbid waters, two large rafts had been prepared for them and their horses. Howland Reed escorted him wordlessly on the passageway; once away from prying ears, the old Lord handed over the shield of the Knight of the Laughing Tree, bundled up in a thick shadowcat pelt.
"You're really going to Dragonstone." He sounded as though he had never known defeat until that very moment. Jon couldn't meet his eyes, not even when Howland's hands clamped around his upper arms, shuddering in fear and urgency, the fingers digging so hard into the cloak's fabric Jon was sure there would soon be a bruise.
"You won't find your father, there, Jon. There's nothing on that blasted island for you, except fire, and blood. And heartbreak! Lyanna rode south and died. Ned rode south and died. I don't want you to share their same fate!"
Will I? Am I headed to my own downfall?
Jon remembered his dreams, the green dragon's bronze eyes calling out to him, and the dark depths of Winterfell's crypts where he willingly followed his ghosts; he thought about Lady Catelyn and all the times her glare and words made him feel like he did not belong; he thought about Sansa's ashen face as Bran revealed the truth...
Howland glanced up, his huge eyes frisking over his face as if trying to commit each detail to memory, beseeching him, and Jon believed he could see a glimpse of that young man, loyal and desperate, as he was forced to give up the squalling baby in his arms to pursue a higher purpose.
'Are you lost, boy?'
I am. But now I finally know what I was looking for.
He drew in a breath and gently unclasped the fingers gripping his jerkin. "I must go," he said and his blood rushed faster in his veins.
Hotter.
He only hoped Howland would understand and forgive him.
"I've been a Stark for all my life. Perhaps it's time I become something else."
I was writing this chapter when S8 aired, and, as you can imagine, that wasn't easy, nor comfortable for many reasons, the most relevant being: Season 8 sucked. There's no other way to put it and I don't want to add anything to this profound concept, except that Jon was definitely among the characters that suffered the most from the lack of consistency in the "writing", and that, in turn, negatively influenced my approach to this chapter.
It was difficult. Am I satisfied with the outcome? Yes and no, depends on the days, but then again I'm never completely satisfied with my stuff.
I wanted to write a chapter that dealt with Lyanna and that had Howland and Meera Reed at its core: I struggled, at first, because one of the rules in writing is "show, don't tell" and this is nothing but 20 pages of pure TELL, but I really wanted Howland to have his moment to shine and I couldn't do that if I chose to take all this exposition and turn it into, let's say, a vision from Bran?
So here you have the story as told by the sole witness, and Jon's reaction to it.
He didn't take it very well, poor darling, and to be honest he was quite brutal with Lord Reed, but he will come around. Eventually. His identity quest is not even remotely done: a big role will be played by Jaime in the next chapter, so expect some more talking, about Rhaegar for a change.
As for Meera, this was me flipping the bird in D&D's general direction for having completely forgotten about her in the finale... I mean, I don't know, perhaps she might have liked to be there for Bran's acclamation, since she's the reason why he's alive? And sorry if I am bitter, but she was a f***ing badass hero beyond the Wall and deserved some recognition!
So, this is my vengeance, for the way they treated her. I gave her a scene at the beginning where she basically saves everybody's ass, and I gave her another sweet scene at the end, because Jon deserves a sister who isn't a trained assassin or an ambitious bitch (kiddin', you know how much I love both Arya and Sansa!). And yes, they are milk siblings because I loved the idea and Edric Dayne isn't even in my story, anyway.
If you want a visual imagery for the Neck's swamp, think about the Swamp of Sadness from The Neverending Story: that was a big inspiration. (Another pretty obvious one was Harry Potter, of course, and the letter he finds at 12 Grimmauld Place.)
Don't worry about the lack of Braime in this chapter: in hindsight, it was truly for the best. I didn't want to write any shipping material, while I still seethed with rage, but Chapters 26-27 will be huge ones for Jaime and Brienne, both individually and as a couple.
I'll update in a couple of days, promise!
Stay safe, stay at home if you can and wash your hands!