Lyanna's letter to Stannis arrived in King's Landing before Rickard Stark himself did, carried to Kings' Landing by a raven traveling much faster than guards holding prisoners.
"Tell me this is not your doing," she had written, just the single sentence on the parchment, the edges of the words smeared and blurred with wetness that Stannis very much suspected, and feared, was caused by her tears. He tried to recall if he had ever seen her crying in their not-yet years of marriage, in their still fledgling union, and decided that he had not. Her tears, if she shed them, she kept to herself.
And now he had touched her tears on the page, and still had never seen his wife weeping
He prayed to the gods he had long ceased to believe that her tears were angry tears, proof of her wrath towards the husband she was doubting, and that they were not tears of despair and grief.
There had been no mystery as to what the 'this' she had referred to in the letter was. The news of her father's arrest must have reached Lyanna. And her brothers.
Ned Stark had written his own letter to Stannis, entreating Stannis to champion Lord Rickard's cause to the king. "My father would never have been a party to such treason," Ned had written. "House Stark has been steadfast and constant in our loyalty to the Iron Throne ever since the last Winter King bended the knee to the first Aegon Targaryen."
There is a lot you do not know about your lord father, Ned.
And Rickard Stark most probably did not see it as treason; he was plotting to replace one Targaryen with another, not seeking the throne for himself or for any other lord.
Yet Ned's letter was free of any rebuke or even suspicion about Stannis' possible complicity in Rickard Stark's fate. Whatever it was Lyanna suspected, or dreaded, she must have kept her suspicion and dread to herself, not sharing them with her brother.
Brandon Stark probably knew much, much more than his younger brother. Stannis recalled the tension between Rickard Stark and his eldest son at the tourney celebrating Rhaegar Targaryen's nameday.
That tourney, and the feast afterwards, seemed like a hundred years in the past to Stannis. It was the beginning of the end, that was how he saw it now, the spark that rekindled the fire. They should have stayed at Storm's End and not gone to that tourney, he and Lyanna. He should have heeded Lyanna's initial reluctance and made some excuse to decline the king's invitation.
But it was not an invitation. It was a summon, a command from an already suspicious and paranoid king.
Had the king suspected Rickard Stark, even then? Lord Rickard's son-in-law and daughter refusing the king's command would have only made matters worse for the Starks.
Lyanna's dream haunted him. "I dreamt of you. And the king. Riding into a great storm," she had told him, what felt like a lifetime ago.
Her father was not in that dream. Surely she would have taken some comfort in that?
Or perhaps she was haunted by the nightmare of Stannis and his king riding into the storm to slay her father.
She would never forgive him, or indeed any man she believed had betrayed her father. Not even the father of the child she was carrying, Stannis was certain of that.
"This is not my doing. I did nothing," he wanted to write to her. But in truth that seemed like his greatest sin; that he was here in King's Landing, by the king's side, holding court and dispensing justice as the king's Hand when Aerys was indisposed – a very common occurrence lately – and yet he had known nothing of the king's plan to arrest Rickard Stark, had been in ignorance of the schemes and the plans the king was hatching with Lord Varys, had in fact, done nothing, nothing at all.
This is my doing a fter all. I did nothing. I was blind when I should have been more aware, dea f when I should have been more conscious.
And what could he say when Rickard Stark was finally in the throne room, waiting for the king's judgment? His father-in-law had all but admitted to Stannis his support for the crown prince over the king.
Lie. Lie for my father's sake, so our unborn child would not be fathered by the man who caused the death of its grandfather and destroyed the life of its mother. Lie for your wife's sake.
It was Lyanna's voice he was hearing in his head.
It would not be a lie. Talking is not a crime. Rickard Stark has done nothing as yet.
Hasn't he? Gathering an army against the king is treason of the highest order. When would you consider it a crime? When they have finally murdered the king in his own throne room?
Rhaegar Targaryen would not consent to his own father being treated in that manner. Whatever else he is, he is not a kinslayer.
Rhaegar is imprisoned in his father's dungeon. He is no longer in control of this rebellion, if he ever was in the first place.
I have a duty to my king. I have sworn an oath.
What about your other duties? Choose, Stannis. For once in your li fe, pick a side and stick to it, competing duties notwithstanding. If this was your blood leading the rebellion, would you have hesitated? Robert, say, or your lord father. You would choose them over the king as sure as night comes after day.
Rickard Stark is not blood. And even with my own flesh and blood, the decision would not have come easy.
Rickard Stark is blood to Lyanna, blood to the child she is carrying. Your child. If Lord Stark is attainted, what do you suppose will happen to his children? To his grandchildren? What about your duty to protect your family? Your wife and child?
It was not with his absent wife he was arguing, but with himself.
I dreamt that we grew old together. And you were sad and unhappy. And full of regrets. He had finally told Lyanna this on his last night at Storm's End. On their last night together, for who knows how long. She had assumed that he was thinking of Rhaegar when he thought of her regrets, had insisted that Rhaegar was like a closed book to her, the words fading more and more with the passing of each day, the memory of it no more than a faint remembrance.
But he had not been thinking of Rhaegar at all. Only of the life they would have made together, he and Lyanna. It was still possible to have regrets about the life you had led, without actually lamenting the path you had not taken in its stead.
In the end, his reply to Lyanna's one-sentence letter consisted only of his hope that she was looking after her health, and the health of their unborn child. Anything else seemed too fraught with hidden meanings, too full of promises he was not at all certain he could keep.
I did nothing. I stood by and watched. The thought made him shudder.