11.

After a night-and a morning-in Daenerys' bed, spending the remainder of the day in the company of a young cousin who could not have been more openly hostile if she were actually snarling and slavering was the last thing Jorah wished for. He would much rather have gone with her into the village-he'd not yet had that opportunity himself, except to pass through on their way to the hall when they first arrived on the island-but Jory's invitation had been very obviously extended only to the queen. When Daenerys realized this, she had not at first seemed any more pleased than he to be apart, which made him smile and squeeze her hand in his.

Lyanna's scowl, on the other hand, doubtless made the decision for her, and Jorah could no more blame Daenerys for abandoning him to avoid the girl than he could shirk his own responsibility to make things right with this last of his kinswomen. Or to attempt to. It was his duty to as much for Daenerys' sake as for his own to see to it that her tenuous hold over her kingdoms was not weakened by misdirected resentment. Especially not now that they were lovers.

When the heavy wooden doors of the hall fell shut with a thud behind the party, Jorah turned around before he could talk himself out of doing what he must, white cloak flapping about him, and met the pair of narrowed eyes that glittered at him across the fire-lit room.

"A word, cousin?" he said.

Lyanna's only response was to fold her arms across her chest and to quirk one eyebrow at him. Jorah wasn't sure which annoyed him more: the insolence that dared him to say something that met with her satisfaction, as if he were not more than thrice her age, or that she did not ask Aly's girl, who was shadowing her as usual, to leave them be.

"Erena," he addressed his cousin's daughter-for the first time, he realized, "the Queen's handmaids meant to see about some washing. Show them where to do it?"

She obeyed-if slinking off in in that way unique to adolescents could be called obedience; he had a sudden appreciation for why his lord father had never tolerated that attitude in him. As his gaze followed her around the perimeter of the hall and up the staircase, the barrel of ale on the sideboard caught his eye. He shambled to it and filled one of the pewter flagons, squeezing a wedge of lemon into the froth. Just as he raised it to drink, Lyanna spoke.

"How did you face the savages of the east when you can't face a girl without liquid courage?"

Ale sloshed over the toes of his boots as Jorah turned to her; he barely contained his temper as he found her sizing him up. He forced himself to take deep breath, and then a long, slow drink, never breaking eye contact with her over the rim of the tankard until the cold rolled down his throat and he could speak in a measured tone.

"You know, you have only to look in a mirror to have your proof."

"Proof?"

"That Queen Daenerys is not like her father."

"What's a mirror got to-"

"You've not been roasted for your treasonous words."

Jorah drank again, then tilted his head so that he looked down on Lyanna. She advanced on him, however, teeth flashing white in her dark face as she craned her neck far back to meet his eye. Not only was she unintimidated by him, she seemed entirely heedless of the fact that he loomed over her.

"That was exactly the fate that befell our liege-lords!"

"Your liege-lords!" He snorted into his cup. "You weren't even bloody born."

"You're a fool, cousin, but you're no idiot. You know as well as I we've cause to suspect a Targaryen on the Iron Throne."

"Aye. Better than you, in fact." His gaze dropped from hers as drained the tankard and set it aside, then leaned back against the sideboard, the uneven grain of the wood pressing into his palms. "That was how I justified informing on them-her grace and her brother. They were the Mad King's children. What was it to me if Robert Baratheon knew where they lived, or ended their lives, if it meant I got mine back?"

He felt the tug of the frown in the deep lines of his face as he remembered that conversation across Illyrio Mopatis' table laden with such delicacies as his exile could not afford. It shamed him to think how brief his hesitation had been before he agreed to spy on the Beggar King and the princess they called Stormborn. Even more disgraceful had been seeing her for the first time at her betrothal feast, not a bride but a frightened child, and with the magister's good wine drowning out the echo of his own voice in his mind that had once pledged to do succor to women in their distress and to defend the his gaze found the empty tankard again, Lyanna drew his attention back to her, spittle glistening in the air at his chest level with the vehemence of her words.

"You wouldn't have got anything of the sort from us, if you obtained a pardon for dishonoring our House through such dishonorable means."

"But I thought you were suspicious of the Mad King's daughter."

Lyanna opened her mouth in an automatic retort, then closed it again as she realized the flaw in her logic. Her scowl almost made a smile twitch at the corner of his mouth, but then he saw her fingers clench into fists at her sides, eyes squinting up at him as her stubbornness overtook her once more.

"It's one thing not to want a possible madwoman for queen," she argued. "Wishing exiled children dead's another entirely."

Now it was Jorah's turn to be rendered momentarily speechless. Varys wanted them watched, not harmed, he wanted to utter in retort, as he had tried to defend himself to Daenerys in Meereen. But he this time, he wisely kept his mouth shut. It made no matter what Varys wanted. Robert, the Usurper, wanted Daenerys and her child killed, and nothing Jorah could say changed the truth that the information he fed the Master of Whispers nearly killed Daenerys. And her child had died, in the end, as part of that chain of events.

"Well?" One of Lyanna's wide hips jutted beneath her fist in an impatient stance he'd seen her mother model so many times, when he was an errant boy. Never mind he was old enough to be Lyanna's father. "Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

"It should please you to know Ned Stark held Aerys' children in the same regard," Jorah mumbled.

Barristan Selmy had revealed what was said on King Robert's small council, once, when Daenerys gathered her advisers to discuss her potential allies in Westeros. It had not surprised Jorah to learn how low he'd sunk in his former liege-lord's estimation-not that Ned ever had fully approved of him, even when they called each other friend-but it nevertheless rankled that their shared history, the bonds of their two Houses, were not enough to make him look beyond that one sin to determine Jorah's character.

"Ned Stark wanted your head for slave trading."

And there it was-the truth of the matter at last.

Jorah stood up straighter, shoulders squared beneath the spotless folds of his cloak. "Would the executioner's sword sing more sweetly to you than the voice of your kinsman who stands here to say…" He swallowed, and his pride tasted not so bitter as once it had. "…I'm sorry?"

He heard the rush of air from Lyanna's lungs even as he saw her posture sag as though his words had physical weight. For the first time, it seemed, since their conversation began, she blinked. "You're…?" Her lips pressed closed, and her thick black eyebrows drew together above the bridge of her nose.

Though Jorah resisted the urge to insult his young cousin's dignity by ruffling her hair, he could not stop the gruff chuckle that rattled in his chest.

"You're too like me for your own good, girl." Earning a glower from her for that, he hastened to add, "You mislike uttering the word sorry even if you're not using it to make an apology. I'm learning, only...see to you don't learn the lesson so late in life as me, eh? It'll save you a deal of heartache."

As he spoke he'd raised a hand to scuff the tips of his fingertips over his bearded jawline. He let it fall to his side again as he became aware of Lyanna's eyes staring at him from a face that was a dark, not-pretty mask, yet somehow reminded him of Daenerys' as she demanded he speak plain, without excuse.

"I'm sorry for dishonoring our House. For all that fell to you after I left. For Dacey…" Stinging moisture in his eyes refracted Lyanna's face into many as he pictured Maege and her daughters lined up to receive him and his Queen into their hall, and the one who lent as much willowy grace to his yearnings left a void as deep as if the very pines had been uprooted from the land. "The only thing I've wanted all these years was home."

"Not…" Lyanna paused to clear her throat, but still managed only to choke out, "Not her?"

"Just home." Even before she left him for her merchant prince, even when he sought solace in her arms, it had never been Lynesse of whom he dreamed as he did battle for gold up and down the Rhoyne. Mayhaps he'd known she was lost to him before he ever fled Bear Island with her. "And all of you."

Blood ran thicker...and apart from those who bore the name Mormont, only Daenerys was blood of his blood.

He reached out clumsily with his big hand, not presuming to embrace Lyanna, but only thinking to give her shoulder a squeeze, but she stepped back from him, her boots kicking up dust from the earthen floor.

"Yet you're going away again, soon. And probably taking one of my sisters this time."

Her rebuff of his affection hurt, but he tried his best to let it fall away along with his hand to his side. Years of smoldering resentment had erupted last night, and he could not very well expect Lyanna to cool off in a day; at least he could be grateful that the least forgiving member of his family now seemed more resentful that he had not returned home to say.

"At least now I won't lose my head if I visit," he said, "and you can come to King's Landing."

"The Queen will have a chamber made ready and awaiting, will she? In the dungeons, for my treasonous words?"

Jorah smirked. "Should you wish to come to court, an apology would not go amiss."

"Didn't you say I'm too like you for my own good?"

The main hall was empty when Dany and the other women returned from the village. Strangely empty. Maege's children and grandchildren ought to have been lumbering about, or at least lurking around the yard, but they had not seen a soul upon entering Bear Hall's gates.

In her own chamber she found Jhiqui perched on the bed, sulking, her back to the Queen.

"Have you been alone this whole time, sweetling?"

The Dothraki girl nearly leapt to her feet. "Khaleesi! You frighten me."

"Apologies, but why is it so quiet? Where is everyone?"

"Irri and Rakharo…" Jhiqui's mouth tightened into a thin line. "They leave. The Andal was with the little she-bear. No one want to go near them." She shrugged. "So I am here."

"Is he still with the – with Lyanna?"

Jhiqui shook her head. "He came by here. He say to tell you he is with the horses."

So Dany made her way to the stables, through the drifts of snow beginning to fall, past the wooden buildings that ringed the edges of the keep between its main hall and outer walls, and pushed through the heavy double doors that marked the largest structure.

Ser Jorah held the reins of her silver in one hand, leading her out to where his own chestnut destrier waited, tied to a wooden stake. She leaned against the wall for a moment, observing him, until her mare stomped a foot in the straw and whinnied in Dany's direction, alerting him to her presence.

Her knight approached her swiftly, his hands pulling her face in, drawing his mouth hot across hers, and the force of his embrace nearly made her stumble backwards before he lowered an arm across her back to support her.

"I was only gone a few hours," Dany gasped when he finally released her. "Were you truly so desperate in my absence?" His mouth tasted sour, like ale. "Did your cousin bare her claws?"

"I can handle a she-bear or two on my own," he replied.

"You spoke to Lyanna, then?"

"Aye." His half-smile suggested it had gone well, or at least not ill – at least, not for him.

"I don't have a rebellion on my hands?"

"Not from the likes of her."

Dany smiled, brushing her hand down the silver mare's flank. "Now if only I ride to every noble in Westeros and shout at their supper…"

He chuckled in response, and released her arm. "Speaking of riding…"

"Yes, what are the horses for?" Both were groomed and saddled - a task Ser Jorah must have taken upon himself, for Bear Hall had no servants for its stables.

"I have something to show you."

"Something far from here, I take it."

"Not too far," he said, "but too far to walk."

"Lyanna must have frightened you after all," she teased. "Now you're fleeing the keep."

"You are welcome to stay with her if you wish, your grace."

Dany took the reins from Jorah's hand, swinging herself onto the back of her silver in a single fluid motion.

"I would rather stare down a real bear," she muttered, and Jorah chuckled ahead of her as he mounted his own horse and led the way out of the stables and through Bear Hall's gates.

They rounded the wooden fence that formed the perimeter of the keep not back down the hill she had climbed hardly an hour before, but through the thick woods that circled the home of House Mormont, until Dany could no longer see its towers behind them. Pines stretched for miles on every side, blanketed in thick snow, a world of white stillness broken only by the hushed footfalls of two horses.

She might have spoken, or tried to, but it seemed wrong somehow to break the spell, and much of Dany's attention was devoted to avoiding the branches overhead. Her knight was focused as well, trying to remember a path he had likely not travelled in ten years or more. The comfortable silence reminded her of their time in the Dothraki Sea, when long days of riding quickly wore down conversation, when the mere presence of a Westerosi warrior had helped to ease her pain.

If she were truly honest, there was something awkward in the silence, at least for her. She had always spoken her mind to Jorah, admitted things she would not have to anyone else, but everything was different between them after the previous night, and only a few days before a kiss had once again nearly destroyed their easy friendship. If the lovemaking went sour, would he leave her for good? Would he grow tired of her one day and return here, where he belonged?

Just as she worked up near enough courage to say something, the trees parted on either side of their horses, revealing a small clearing with a single weirwood in its center, wider and taller than any other Dany had yet seen. She slid from her mount and crept toward it, wondering as she often did if the Northerners were right, if their gods truly dwelt within the ivory bark of the trees they knelt to. As she approached, however, she realized the clearing dropped off several feet behind the tree and formed a rocky cliff overlooking a vast, icy sea. The tree's red-eyed face looked over the water as well, as though it wept for some distant shore.

"I can see why you wanted a pardon so desperately." As soon as the words left her mouth, Dany wished she could take them back. Why bring that up again now, here?

"It is only a tree, Daenerys." Her knight had been standing several feet behind, near the horses, watching her.

"And my throne is only metal," she countered, "yet you fought so bravely that I might sit upon it."

Jorah's footfalls crunched in the clean snow. "That was for you. For the good of the realm. Not for metal, or for trees."

"You do not regret the vows you swore me, then? Though tomorrow I shall lead you away from your beautiful island, back to-"

His mouth cut her off, the kiss long and slow. Dany heard the crimson leaves shifting overhead, rustled by the sea's breeze, and thought there might be something divine within these strange, twisted trees after all.

"I have little love for Kings' Landing," her knight admitted, "but I would follow you anywhere, and be glad of it."

"Even if I asked you to wade through sewers again?"

"Even then."

The silence between them was heavy as Dany pondered this latest declaration of loyalty.

"There is something of the island we might bring back with us." She might as well come clean now; surely he would notice when his cousin followed them out the gates tomorrow morning, and Lyanna had given some of it away already. "I offered Jorelle a place at court, and she has accepted."

"She told me of your offer," he said. "I was surprised I did not hear of it from you."

"I am the Queen. I do not need your counsel to invite ladies to court."

"Aye. But I had thought you might inform me when said lady is one of my flesh and blood."

You were hardly looking at me at the time. Dany thought it best not to voice that thought just yet. She arched onto the balls of her feet instead, allowing her chest to brush against his tunic as she stretched up to nip at the untrimmed hairs below his jaw.

"An excellent strategy, Your Grace," he growled low in her ear, "but you already used it last night, I'm afraid."

A bluff, surely, for Dany had never had cause to doubt her powers of persuasion in this regard. "Did you ride me out all this way, away from your family, only to speak with me?"

"That depends." His broad hands circled her waist, pulling her firmly against him. "Do you intend to run this time?"

She silenced the question in a kiss, submitting to his grip and the press of his tongue, and thought that despite the freezing air she would have gladly agreed never to walk, nor run, from this place ever again.