EDDARD

The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. He remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. He had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had as well been blind.

Or dead. Buried with his king. "Ah, Robert," he murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.

The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who laboured on his castle, so they might never reveal its secrets.

He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert's own blood, who had run when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. "Fool," he cried to the darkness, "thrice-damned blind fool."

Cersei Lannister's face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die," she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life's blood.

When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him.

When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again.

Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his breathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice. He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark. Robert's brothers were out in the world, raising armies at Dragonstone and Storm's End. Alyn and Harwin would return to King's Landing with the rest of his household guard once they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached her, and the lords of river and mountain and Vale would join her.

He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. "Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne together . . . "

I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill you.

The door to his cell swung open and stood there in the dim candle light was Cersei.

"Lord Stark."

No. Not Cersei. Joanna.

The princess didn't enter the cell but just stood there watching him cautiously but not pityingly.

"You can leave us." Joanna said turning to the guard. He seemed hesitant to leave her alone but a quick glare fixed the situation.

"I probably want to be here as much as you want to see me much I want to make sure we are both clear on our situation."

Ned queried, "situation?"

"Yes." She scoffed. "You keep what you saw a secret and I will advise Joffrey to make you join the Nights Watch. You just have to swear fealty to Joffrey and admit that you lied about-"

"No."

Joanna's mouth twitched in confusion. "What?" She thought this was a good deal. A better deal than a traitor and a liar deserved. He claimed he was honouring Robert but claiming that his true children were bastards was doing the exact opposite.

Ned stared the girl straight in the eye. "Joffrey is not the rightful King. Your real father is Ser Jaime. You and your siblings are bastards."

He watched her reaction carefully, watching the disbelief which quickly turned to anger.

"You're lying!" Joanna snapped, stepping forwards.

"You look like the Queen when you're angry. All four of you look like your mother and not at all like Robert Baratheon. In fact you look just like the Kingslayer. You act like him too and from what I've seen you and him are incredibly close. Doesn't that strike you as odd at all?"

Her face froze and in her emerald eyes was a anger that burnt so deeply and harshly he knew that she would gladly execute him right there herself.

"My uncle is a better man than you could ever hope to be. Whilst Robert Baratheon, my real father, practically ignored me since birth, Jaime actually cared for me. When my mother refused to let me learn how to fight he would. At night when everyone else slept we would sneak into the courtyard and he showed me how to use a sword and bow. He didn't care if I was a princess and a girl and whether or not it was proper for someone of my status. He saw a lonely little girl who need someone to fill that gap that was left in her heart. So how dare you criticise him when you idolised that fat drunken oaf who called himself the King. My uncle is a honest and caring man who took vows and unlike your best friend has the honour not to break them. So you dare lie to my face again and say such disgusting and slanderous things about him then it isn't my brother you should be worrying about. I won't hesitate to kill you myself."

Ned saw the love she had in her eyes. It was different to the love she had for Joffrey. When she spoke of Joffrey she seemed to hover between love and hate but with Jaime he saw a pure, true love that Ned hadn't seen in a long time.

"Guard! Lock him up." She almost growled before storming off.

She may not have Baratheon blood, Ned thought, but she definitely had fury.