Arya was fast asleep when she felt Jaime's nose brush softly against her skin. It was freezing cold.

'I'm taking Jo for a walk,' he murmured; kissing her cheek.

'Don't forget…warm clothes…' Arya mumbled, and pulled the wolf skin pelt over her head.

Jaime mounted up beside Jon Snow, and gave him a pointed look.

'She fell for it.'

Snow looked him up and down with all the self-righteous condemnation that Jaime had hated in his father.

'We should find her before Arya wakes up,' the boy said in his bumpkin-ish Northern drawl, 'a child that age couldn't have gone far.'

Jaime snorted under his breath that Snow might be surprised.

They set off into the pre-dawn mist with the silence straining between them like the strings of a un-tuned fiddle; in the direction of a heart tree beyond the Wall where (Snow claimed), his own direwolf seemed to be sitting in the snow with Nymeria; growling at her and trying to bite her tail off.

'The wolves are there?' Jaime had snapped in response; trying to hide his despair when an altercation between him (looking for Jo) and Snow (on the way to the practice yard) had resulted in their mutual discovery of the open tunnel gate; 'what fucking use is that to me? Is my child there?'

'How should I know?' Snow had snapped back, in a sulky tone of voice that had reminded Jaime far too much of Arya for comfort, 'if she loves Nymeria as much as you say you does, it's stupid to think she'll be anywhere else.'

'And what if she is somewhere else, Snow?'

When Snow had not replied, his silence had disturbed Jaime too much to think up a reply.

He thought ahead. To an hour from now. To two. To her face – Arya's face – if they didn't find her alive. Her silences. Her screams. Her silences that were worse.

Jaime thought ahead. To an hour from now. To two. To himself. To finding his daughter dead in the snow. With frost in her hair. With her throat ripped out. With half a body.

He bit his tongue to stop any expression of fear horror fear gods no from leaving his lips.

Make it me, he whispered, to the old gods his wife prayed to, when it suited her, if someone has to die, make me die instead. Please. Please. Please.

In the mist they met with rangers returning. Snow ordered them to turn around and scour the area around them.

'What if we find nothing, Lord Snow?' one of them asked.

'Then return to Castle Black,' Snow gravely replied, 'and – '

'– and say nothing of this to the Lady Lannister,' Jaime had added, 'unless you want your balls roasted on a spit.'

Snow had glared at him in a way that was clearly meant to be intimidating, but that looked hilarious.

'This isn't Casterly Rock, Lannister,' Snow had snapped; glowering at Jaime and at the (now snickering) rangers, 'you don't threaten my men or presume to give them orders.'

'Forgive me, Lord Commander,' Jaime had replied; bowing sweepingly in his saddle; 'I have a terrible habit of correcting mistakes, regardless of context, that Arya has often had to speak to me about.'

Snow gave him a filthy look and spurred his horse away into a gallop. Jaime followed; his lips curling into a smile. A good fight with his good-brother (gods help him) might very well help to keep images of Jo's corpse out of his head.

'Don't the noble men of the Night's Watch object to being put on babysitting duty?' Jaime asked, in a ringing voice that made Snow wince.

'They aren't used to objecting,' the Lord Commander coldly replied, 'gets them whipped.'

'Hm,' Jaime acknowledged, 'if only you'd done the same to whoever left the gate open.'

Snow turned his head to look at him, with murder in his burning grey eyes.

'Nobody left the fucking gate open!'

'Then how did she get out?'

'I don't know!'

'You don't know. My daughter is out there somewhere, alone in the frozen fucking wastes, and you don't fucking know?'

'She is also my niece.'

Jaime suddenly felt like punching the little pup there and then.

'She's your niece?' Jaime repeated, 'you could have fucking fooled me! Yesterday, you didn't even look at her. Today, you mention her dying like she's some piece of meat you don't care about!'

'I do care about her,' Snow snorted; as though he didn't give a fuck whether Jaime believed him or not; 'she's a guileless, innocent child, and I don't blame her at all for you.'

Joanna put her palm to the bark of the heart tree.

It was like all the things that she had ever seen in her dreams, only better. Clouds shaped like horseys and wolfies flew across the sky. They chased each other, and played a game. A big lion appeared in the colours of the clouds and chased them all away; its eyes bright and green, like Father's. It loped to where Joanna stood, and handed her a rose made of starlight.

'For you, little wolf,' the lion said, and when Joanna touched it, the world went dark.

She was scaredsy for a little while, because she couldn't see. But she was still holding the rose; it clinked like something broken in her palm, and nearby she could feel the wolfies there. She would always be safe if they were there.

Joanna's eyes became used to the dark. Things started to crawl out of it. It became very, very cold. And suddenly she was rising, higher and higher, above the crawling things; above the world: she could see all of it; all of the world on one side of her, and all of the world on the other side of her; beneath her like a giant map. It was night time, so the world had candles burning, and fires, and torches lighting up great castles shaped like big circles and rectangles and innumerable golden and silver lines all mashing together and lining together like the important people did each day when they came to ask Mother for things. She saw more and more patterns in the light – she could hear them too, like a sweet kind of music that she could fall asleep to. They drew themselves up and danced for her; danced to the music of their own light.

Then the lights started to go out.

They went slowly at first. Candles went out one by one. Then lamps. Then there was a rush; then it suddenly got colder; then the dark was sweeping across the light like the waves that crashed under Castlelly Rock and the lights were dying in that rush; in that wave. Smoke wasn't erupting out of the dark like it usually did when the lights went out; ice was coming to life instead: ice candles, ice lamps, ice castles springing up beneath the blanket of the dark.

And then, ice people.

She saw them swarm across the world. Dark and grey and cold; eyes glowing blue like ice with fire inside it. She saw the blood of living people flowing into rivers and turning them red; red lakes running through landscapes of ice; like ice with fire oozing out of it. She saw Father on the plains of Castlelly Rock with his armies; fighting the ice people; fighting with a hundred bright knives sticking into him.

Jo began to cry.

She saw her father fall. She heard her mother screaming as she reached his side, her armour staining with his blood. There was an axe in her back. Blood was dripping out of her mouth.

Jo began to scream. Her screams mingled with her mother's.

'No, you don't die! Don't die!'

A red tide swept against the beach by Castlelly Rock, turning the sand red. When the sea turned to ice, that was red too. Above her the stars were bleeding – 'No, no no no,' Jo started to moan; trying to step away from the tree; to step out of it, 'no, no no no!'

She felt something moving behind her. She heard the wolfies growling; growling as it got closer and closer and colder and colder.

There was ice on the tips of her fingers. She couldn't move at all. But even though she couldn't move, she knew.

She could see them. She could feel them.

They're coming.