Tyrion
No wonder the Night's Watch had dwindling numbers. All it had to offer was cold, hardship and company of the worst sort. Tyrion looked down from the balcony of the room in which Bran had put him, watching the bustle in the streets below. The people who defeated the Others the first time might have done better to make the Wall more than a place to throw people away. The Starks have food, wine, and more women to men than anywhere but a motherhouse. Small wonder half the bloody country's shown up, and fast friends at that. There was more to do than simply whet blades, fletch arrows and wait for the next wave of dead men though, Tyrion discovered. There's no place like a tourney to do a little plotting, and this is putting every tourney ever held to shame. Highborn families were already trying to arrange potent matches for their unwed children, the especially enterprising among them going beyond their homeland to reach that end. All the same, Tyrion rather felt such matches were moot with the prospect of the Others looming over everyone like a cleaver over meat. And southern marriages will not enamor the Starks to these ambitious lords, any more than they will the King in the North. There was plenty of chatter to be heard at Winterfell as well, of course, but as much of it was in some flavor of the Old Tongue or other Tyrion could scarce put hearing it to use. Even the topic of Viserion had been more or less left to lie, lingering as he did in the godswood well away from the eyes of the castle's myriad visitors. Nobody much wants to bother with this Aegon either, Tyrion thought. He is already married to his beautiful Dornish cousin and they hold their court of bastards and exiles behind closed doors. He'd gone through a small cask mulling everything over in his mind, trying to decide what to do, who to speak to first. With much to do and precious little time to do it, I'd best get started sooner rather than later. Tyrion left his room once the wine had run its course, having decided only that he would be thrown unceremoniously off whatever course he chose. I'll leave it to these northern gods, shall I? Small as I am, though, I may well escape their notice. All for the better, I can't imagine they're fond of Lannisters any more than they are kinslayers or dwarves.
Brooding on the nature of the gods as he was, his eyes were on his shoes and the stone floor in front of him even as he made his way into Winterfell's hall. Livelier now than when last Tyrion had seen it by far, and with so many people within its confines it was only with a keen eye that he spotted the last of the scorch marks in the stone from when the castle had been razed. Bolton's bastard knew no more of siegecraft than he did warfare. And the crannogmen had more than had their say as well, with the hide tent-turrets sprouting off of every tower. To say nothing of the slight green-eyed people who pour out of every wound the wights inflict upon our earthen walls and their formidable overlord. Nerves had been well-frayed the night they arrived and Tyrion did not care to press the patience of the Lord of the Neck, but something he said had stoked some old anger in the man's eyes all the same. A lizard-lion to the marrow, Tyrion thought. A bull of monstrous size, with scars to match. He's eaten better men than me, I think. Bigger, too. Then came the little show between Lady Reed and Connington, baffling as it was. He spoke as if he knew her. How in all seven hells the Lord of Griffin's Roost might have met a crannogwoman once upon a time was a question he burned to ask, though not so much as to risk Jon Connington pitching him out a window. Or catch a poisoned arrow in the face. The daughter they shared, now Princess of Winterfell, took rather more after her mother than her father. He gave her not olive skin nor slight limbs nor those damnable green eyes. Of course, Tyrion had not been at her with a Myrish lens, but he wondered at the workings of the old gods when it came to the crannogmen of the Neck. Not for the first time, either. His gaze fell on a lad keeping well away from the center of the room who had no more northern blood than Tyrion himself, he knew that at a glance. Not so unusual, he mused. What makes him stick out is how hard he tries to go unnoticed. Whenever a crannogman chanced to come near, the boy went still as a suit of armor, looking away from them studiously until they passed. Like a bloody fawn. Tyrion did his best to approach unseen (not so hard, given he had a packed hall of men to hide behind), finding the lad scarcely taller than he was. He smells of the stables. "Have you been standing there all night?" he asked, acting irritated. The boy all but jumped out of his skin. "We've got a whole herd of horses that need seeing to, come along." Tyrion said, wondering if the boy was smart enough to follow. If he's so keen to get away from the crannogmen, he may. Or he'll just curse me for a dwarf and for putting him to work. On seeing Tyrion for who and what he was, the lad made to follow at once, saying not a word. Tyrion's brain itched at this new mystery, even as he pulled a tankard of ale from the end of one of the tables. A safer one to ponder than the Reeds. I doubt this lad knows much of anything about poisoned arrows.
On reaching the stables, Tyrion found the horses already well-blanketed, fed and watered as he knew he would. Aegon brought the Golden Company with him, and they know well the business of horse care. "Better out away from the crannogmen?" he asked, setting the tankard on a groom's stool. The lad spluttered so badly Tyrion feared his tongue would knot around itself. Not the first of those I've come across. "Sure as sunset they're an eerie lot and those the ones not painting their faces black and white or wearing poisonous flowers in their hair or such madness. I did a bit of wading through their country myself, and it's not an experience I'd much relish revisiting." He took a swig from the tankard, finding it full of a heady beer. "You want something to fear, go to the outer wall the next time the dead men come knocking. Look for one of the lanky monsters, watch him pull a man off his horse and bite his head clean off." "I didn't come up hearing stories about dead men. Nor lanky monsters with long sniffing noses." "You're well-spoken, for a stableboy." His hairless face reddened. "Lots of lordly sorts to learn from, my lord." Tyrion pretended to mull that over, though he knew almost instantly the nature of the boy's origins. "Now, there's plenty of call to tread lightly around the crannogmen. Not so lightly as one might around a sleeping dragon, but then one might be so inclined if he's heard stories of the Neck swallowing armies the way lizard-lions swallow horses." This time the boy's face turned white and he got to spluttering again. "Never mind all that. How might you have come to Winterfell, lad? The best I can figure is you either came to be fostered when Robb Stark struck a pact with the Twins…or you came as part of the detachment from the riverlands to strengthen House Bolton's hold on the north. I was in Essos at the time, but I've been in the company of northmen since. I heard the whole story, yet no one seems to mention you." He pressed the tankard into the boy's shaking hands and waited expectantly. Rather than take a steadying sip, he downed the lot of it in one go, hiccupping afterward. "There was plenty of room at the Twins, though little space if you get my meaning." Tyrion nodded. "Casterly Rock was much the same, especially for a bookish dwarf." "Well, once the business with the wedding was done, Lord Bolton declared his intention to return north and take up at Winterfell. He had a new bride in Fat Walda Frey, one of Merrett Muttonhead's daughters. Her younger brother was Little Walder, Merrett's only son, who came along for the fostering as my lord put it. I came as well, knowing full well once Lord Walder had done his dying the Twins would get a second coat of red as the family fought over the succession. Well, it turned out that Bolton's bastard did for him, then for Walda and her newborn babe, and for all the other Freys who had come north in her retinue. Not me, though. Soon as I heard the first knives drawn I hid down with the dead Starks, down where no one would have thought to look for a…" "A lad from the riverlands." Tyrion finished for him. "Certainly not, I should think. And then?" "Well, the Bastard of Winterfell did for the Bastard of the Dreadfort and how. It wasn't Bolton knives I was hiding from then, but wildling swords and giants' feet. Back into the crypts I went, coming out only when the castle had settled. I kept to the stables, warmest part of the castle where nobody spent much time." "And by such means you managed to keep your head on your shoulders." Tyrion said, impressed. "I might point out that Lady Tully was by birth a Frey, you might pledge service to her." "I might point out that Lady Tully's bloody birthed a Tully of her own, and blood's never meant much between members of House Frey. Stand Together, the words go…Stand Aside might have been better, with every nephew, cousin and uncle climbing over each other." "And where do you stand these days? What name do you go by?" "When I'm called Watt, I answer, my lord. Watt-o'-the-Rivers, if you like. Makes me sound half an outlaw." A small bit of pride crept into his voice. "It does. Very memorable, if I do say so myself." Tyrion opined, the boy deflating at his words. "Watt Rivers might be better, or just Watt." "As you say, my lord. I'd rather till the earth than fill it." He looked into the tankard and Tyrion knew his mind was on a second one. "Go back to the hall, and never mind the crannogmen. Watt's your name, Watt you are, and Watt's no one a Reed will look twice at, nor a Stark." The boy nodded, looking a little more at ease. "Thank you, my lord. Those are the first kind words I've heard these long years." He turned and got as far as the entrance to the stables, snow catching in his black hair. "'Milord'." Tyrion said, almost without thinking. "What?" Watt asked. "Lowborn boys say 'milord.' Not 'my lord.'"
He let Watt get a good distance from the stables before coming out himself, breath hitching at the cold wind. There, now anyone bothering to keep eyes on the horses won't connect some stableboy with Lord Tywin's Bane. The boy had been doing mightily well, it would be a shame for Tyrion to be the dunce that ruined it all on him. He returned to the hall with his mind on crackling bacon to find the lords of the Vale deep in conversation at their accustomed table, the handsome young Lord Harrold conspicuously absent. He was the topic, of course, with each lord trying to capitalize on the unmatched nature of their liege. "Good evening, my lords. It's been too long, truly." Tyrion announced himself. They'll not have forgotten the little man, he thought. The one Lysa Tully's runt wanted to see fly. Though, old Lord Hunter and the handsome, feckless Lyn Corbray, who had waited on the lady hand and foot the day Bronn killed Ser Vardis, were not among the lords present. "Whatever's become of staunch Lord Eon and svelte Ser Lyn?" One of the broken-wheel knights answered, though he looked scarce happy to be talking to an infamous dwarf. "Lord Hunter died in a hunting mishap, followed soon after by his sons Gilwood and Eustace. Lord Harlan rules from Longbow Hall now." The man's tone told Tyrion he smelled a rat, and he saw no men bearing the Hunters' device, fanned silver arrows, in the company of the Valemen. "And Ser Lyn?" The men looked at each other somewhat uneasily. "Dead as well, my lord." It was a different man who sung this song, a homely man with black sideburns thick as hedgerows. Albar Royce, of the Gates of the Moon. Tyrion raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Even with his beloved Lady Forlorn within reach at all times?" "The way Ser Lucas told it, Prince Brandon seemed to think Ser Lyn was killed for his blade." "Well, men have killed for a few coppers, Valyrian steel-" "It was an Other that killed Ser Lyn, my lord. It- he- pulled out his heart the way you'd pull a grape off a vine. He took the sword as well, the better to match against more of the same. The word is razor ice fares poorly against Valyrian steel." Tyrion's head spun. "What happened next?" "Lord Reed met the creature where it had gone to ground, a ruined tower. There was no seeing their dance, but one could hear it halfway across the castle." Another of the broken-wheel knights spoke up, if his stammering could be termed such. "R-r-r-Reed beat him b-b-bloody. But for the p-p-p-princess, he would have killed him, too." A chill ran down Tyrion's spine. "Princess Sansa?" "Yes. She yuh-yuh-" "Oh, hells, Wallace." The first broken-wheel knight said, putting a hand on his relation's shoulder. "She talked to it through one of the Children of the Forest, told it to yield. It did." And I was going to bring her a lemoncake, Tyrion thought dizzily. "Where's the Other now?" "The gods only know. It's no business of mine, that much I know for steeled certain. "And Lady Forlorn?" "Why, with Lord Lyonel Corbray. Pleased to be made whole in his inheritance, I daresay, and parted at last from his covetous, dangerous brother. Lyn would have killed Lyonel if he could work out how to do it without arousing suspicion…but it appears Corbrays are not so gifted at kinslaying as Hunters." Or Lannisters, the unspoken end to his words.
"My lord?" A voice half-forgotten asked from behind Tyrion. Deeper than I remember, he thought, turning, to behold Podrick Payne. The lad had grown a bit in the years since Tyrion had last seen him, but he remained every bit the pea pod he'd been in King's Landing. Tyrion found himself wondering if the same god who looked after dwarfs and imps was perhaps lord of other small things too. Pennies and pebbles and pea pods. The both of us have made it this far, perhaps the god of little things will see us a bit further. He gave a rueful smile. "It's not that I'm not glad to see you, Pod, but…" "Winterfell's not a place to be for someone who ought keep out of a fight." Pod finished. He looked at his boots for wont of something to say. "Uhh, I heard that black fish telling some Tully guardsmen Ser Ilyn killed what that chainless maester made of the Mountain." "He did. I saw the aftermath myself. He spat in Her Grace's face as he died." He shrugged, as if such a feat were a matter of course. "Knights slay monsters, after all." "Not all the knights. Like Ser Lyn." Tyrion got up and led Pod away from the valemen, passing an interesting scene featuring Lord Nestor Royce, half in his cups and red as a grape, talking darkly to his son. "A pair of pigs, and nothing less. Could the singer have been any plainer, or more insulting?" "Never mind, Father. House Royce stands strong as ever and the singer's bones litter the floor of the Vale." His son Albar said, trying to talk him down. "Pigs?" Another voice barked, looking from where a party of wildlings sat. The speaker was a man even hairier than Shagga, flat-nosed and heavy-jowled. Lord Nestor was tall and barrel-chested like all the Royce men, yet next to the hairy brute he seemed half a child but for his bald head. "What's wrong with pigs? Smarter than horses, the lot of them, and they fight until they're quivering strips of meat." Ser Albar stood behind his father, making no grander an impression than his sire. "I seem to remember hearing it were a boar that kicked all this off with you southern clan-houses. What good's a crown, what good's a throne, when some pig can open you from balls to belly and drop your steaming guts on your boots?" He gave a laugh. "And those are the sort hunters go after by the dozen, with fire and lances. Show one of your knightly, kneely hunters a direboar and he'll fill his pants and saddle besides. Best he can do is one lance. A direboar's got two." He tapped the sides of his nose and grinned. "Borroq, leave off. Talk to a kneeler too long and your knees will ache." One of his compatriots called. "Not mine." Borroq replied at once, though he made to leave the hall. Rather astoundingly to Tyrion's eyes, when he nearly collided with a woman on her way in he not only avoided knocking her flat on the floor, he caught her before she so much as left her feet. "Careful, there. Already too many kneelers and not enough ale. No need nor call to go bruising up a pretty face." He said, letting go. To Tyrion's amazement, the woman snorted. "We're not so helpless and fragile as all the songs say. I've had a bloody husband die on me and in me. Royces are not delicate creatures, it comes from being built like barrels." The name 'Royce' made Borroq's bushy black eyebrows go up. "Your husband ought have married one of the slight weepy creatures in your southern stories, then, and kept his eyes off treasure too heavy for his old bones to carry. If you've come looking for your father, I can take you to him." Even as the woman slid her arm in Borroq's, Tyrion saw Lord Nestor's face go a truly alarming shade of red. "What are you upset about?" Tyrion asked as the pair approached. The Royces looked every inch ready to read the infamous Tyrion Lannister a veritable list of grievances, but he bulled over them. "Lords with unwed daughters ought turn their gazes north instead of south. The King in the North has many chieftains and such men poised to rise among his followers, this Borroq among them. He would ask no dowry and never take the least bit interest in your lands, of that I am certain." Tyrion left Lord Royce with a rather different look on his face than he'd sported moments before. The game, the game, even now as the board shakes and pieces fly.
When it was just Pod and he, the boy continued. "Ser Lyn. Lyn Corbray. Of Heart's Home." "Yes, the other lords of the Vale did not seem over-aggrieved at his passing." Pod shook his head. "Not them, my lord. Ser Lyn. An Other killed him." "So I heard, bad luck they seem as formidable as has been purported-" "His name is First Frost. Lord Reed had beaten him bloody and half the castle was looking on outside the ruined tower. But when the princess asked through one of the Children of the Forest, the Other answered." "They share a tongue?" "So it seems, my lord." Pod lowered his voice. "He's not here now, though. The princess took him through a tunnel under the castle to a waterfall and bid him go through it. In return she got Lady Brienne." The name tickled Tyrion's mind. I must call on her as well, he thought. I should tell her about Jaime. "A prisoner exchange?" "I suppose so." Pod seemed oddly chilled, as if he'd seen something he could have done without seeing. "I was there in the tunnel. Before First Frost walked through the waterfall, he said something. The Child that was with us did not put his words into the Common Tongue." Tyrion shrugged. "Perhaps he just told the lot of you to piss off." "It wasn't us he was talking to, it was the princess. Only the princess." Tyrion felt a chill in his belly. No wonder the lad looks disturbed. "Well, never mind all that now, Pod. The Other's long gone now, there's aught to be done for any of it at any rate. Is Lady Brienne able to receive visitors?" "Yes, my lord, but as my lady's professed duty is to the princess and her mother and they scarcely come to the hall…" Tyrion nodded grimly. "Do you know where they are now?" Pod shook his head. "The princess, no. I should think Lady Catelyn is in the godswood as she most always is. Listening for word from her husband." That stuck Tyrion as so depressing he bid Pod return to the hall and keep an eye on the Royces and Borroq. Not that I'll much improve her mood, he thought, but it'd be better to have Lady Catelyn irate than despondent just now. On the way to the godswood he found several of the Golden Company's officers shooting furtive looks at a nearby elephant, its handler dressed in strange red robes and sporting jade rings in his ears. The animal seemed rather skittish for its size, ears flapping constantly. "Leave it, Halfman." One of the men said, noticing Tyrion for the first time. "What's wrong with the beast?" "My guess, it's half-deaf from the bronze tube on its back going off half a hundred times beneath the walls of White Harbor." "Better that than being set upon by endless tides of dead." "Oh, aye." The officer laughed humorlessly. "Why don't you tell the elephant that?" Tyrion ignored the sally. A panicked elephant is the last thing we need right now. Only then did he realized what was needed would surely not have taken up within the castle. "Why not let it mingle with the mammoths? Surely a few friendly faces will set it at ease, even if they're hairier than it's used to." He made his way toward the elephant and the man in red beside it, a fretful worried sort. "You ought let your charge recover outside the castle. Quieter out there, and much roomier." Tyrion said in the Common Tongue and Valyrian before a boy with twisted, hairy legs hopped into view. "Qaleen." The boy said, before using the Trade talk. "Tell him his elephant would be happier out with its own kind." "He knows. He says he doesn't want to let Qovo get eaten by monsters, though. The big men." "Giants do not keep mammoths for feed. In fact, they're supposedly ferociously protective of their beasts." The handler took Tyrion's words with a dubious look on his face. "An elephant behind the castle walls will do little good. Tell your master that there are no slaves here to shovel Qovo's shit as there are across the Narrow Sea, and if it's truly his will that Qovo stay in the castle, he'd best find a shovel. Otherwise, follow me. It so happens there may be a giant or two where I'm headed, and they can take charge of Qovo for now."
The godswood was warmer than the rest of the castle, but neither the handler nor the goat boy would set foot out of the entrance. "Is it the northern gods you fear?" Tyrion asked. "Any place where giants sleep and dragons dream is not one the gods made for men, northern or otherwise." The handler said through the boy. Tyrion found that rather a sound bit of wisdom. Too bad it's wasted on me. He went on alone, heading for the highest-pitched of the snores he heard through the trees. Once, I stepped into darkness with the intent of freeing two young dragons, he told himself. I can handle chatting up a giant. Of course, all that went flying out of his head when he came upon a babe taller than he was. Her ruddy face froze in surprise at the sight of him, mud-brown eyes wide. "Uh?" she burbled, pointing at him. Before he could even turn to run a pair of adults were pushing past the pines and sentinel branches. The woman had given her babe her matching hair and eyes while the man sported dull red hair cropped short out of his blue eyes and bushy across his upper lip. The woman scooped her babe up at once while the man huffed, looking rather short-tempered. On a squinting second look though, one of his eyebrows went up. I must be their first dwarf, Tyrion thought Lucky me. He gestured the way he'd come. "There's an elephant needs seeing to. Could you bring him to the mammoths?" "No mammoths. Go away." The woman said almost before he'd finished the word. She thinks I want to be taken to them. "No. Not me. The elephant." "Efint!" The babe squealed, loud enough to make Tyrion jump. The man mouthed the word to his mate in disbelief. "Yes, 'elephant.' Like mammoths, only gray. No hair, either." He gestured again. "Go see. You go see. Not me." A bit of Old Tongue flitted between the adult giants, along with another happy shriek from their child. Finally the man moved off, muttering hotly under his breath. Rather awkwardly, Tyrion patted his legs and made to leave. "No go." The she-giant said, though she made no move to impede him. Indeed, she simply sat leaned up against a tree, setting the babe on the ground. "Why not?" he asked, before he could question the wisdom of prying further. "Eh." She made a biting motion with her hand, then parted her thumb and fingers and blew. "Ah. It so happens, there's a word for one of those. 'Dragon'. They're dangerous, I wonder if it isn't safer for your babe elsewhere?" "Dragon. Dragon danger, men stay away. Morag safe." "How do you know?" The she-giant smiled. "Dragon sleep more than wake. Wake, stay in water. We stay away, dragon not come." That much adds up, Tyrion thought. Viserion is a lazy bastard without his queen to spur him on.
The air grew warmer as he neared the godswood's pool, the rare snowflakes that reached the mist coming off the water turning to wet spots on Tyrion's clothing. I'm in a cloud, he thought. He strained his ears but there was no sound of the water's surface breaking, no hint that a dragon lurked somewhere out in the depths of the pool. Then again, the lizard-lions scarce give warning before they burst from the mud, he thought. If he wishes me dead, I will be, and there's not the first thing to be done for it. When something did bob up from the pool's depths, Tyrion's heart stopped. It was far too small to be Viserion though, even the sniffing nostrils and peering eyes. Tyrion found a stick and fished whatever it was out of the water, discovering it to be a body. When he let the man splat ignominiously in the muddy moss, ready to start trying to bring the water up, he beheld the sodden face of Petyr Baelish. Dead, Tyrion knew at once, the water voiding Littlefinger's head now it had somewhere to go. One eye was sunk deep into the skull while the other bulged out gruesomely, the mouth little more than a raw red hole. Heads, spikes, walls, you once told me, Father. That quarrel I gave you is looking pretty good right now, I'll bet. A second shape emerged from the pool, purposed where the body had been an aimless floating thing. "Lady Catelyn." Tyrion greeted her, feeling the same sort of helpless calm he had beneath the pyramid. She didn't acknowledge him, didn't look at him, just stared down at the corpse. He stepped away after a moment more of silence, ready to put what was not meant for his eyes to his back. "The day the hill tribesmen attacked us in the Mountains of the Moon, do you remember?" came the question. "I do." he replied, stopping in his tracks though he did not turn around. "You told me the catspaw sent after Bran was none of your doing." This time, he did turn. "It wasn't his, either." Tyrion pointed to Littlefinger's corpse. She shook her head. "He told me it was your dagger. That he lost it to you." This is all a tale I have heard before and I little cared for it the first time. Tyrion shrugged, as if he cared not a whit what she thought of him. "What of it? These are things long past, my lady." Her form rippled, betraying the struggle within. "Had I set aside my fondness for the boy I knew in girlhood, perhaps that day might have ended differently. We might have never reached the Eyrie, turning and coming back down the mountain with an understanding in hand." She walked toward him. Honorable as her husband, he mused, and see what good has come of that. "Forgive me." His breath caught in his chest. "You were betrayed by one you thought trustworthy, Lady Catelyn. It seems all I must forgive you for is a trip through the Mountains of the Moon, fine enough in the last days of summer even with the brigands' attack, and the displeasure of your sister's company." He grimaced. "I've been through those mountains in winter as well, and I'd happily do so again if it meant never having to lay eyes on that woman again." "Lysa killed her husband at Littlefinger's behest. Another piece, another puppet to be strung along until it came time to cut the strings. The river of blood between my husband's house and yours was all his doing." That came as a shock to Tyrion, though the fact that Littlefinger could so easily manipulate Lysa was scarce a surprise. That was how I bloody planned to bring the Vale into Joffrey's peace. "How do you know?" "Sansa told me. She was there to hear Lysa blubber all of it as she tried to throw her own blood through the Moon Door, there to see Littlefinger talk enough sense into her to push her to her death." The rippling got worse. "What am I to say, my lord? But for the rest of your house, Sansa might well have done best to remain in your company and your protection." "I'm not the protecting sort-" Tyrion said at once, knees turning to water. "Sansa says different. It was her idea for me to send for Petyr, to wait here for him. To play a game we had as children." "Small wonder then, that he rose to become the greatest player of the game." "Not this game. All those years of telling lies... Truth meant as truth, mind you, and not another lie." "Truths, my lady?" "Before he pushed Lysa through the door, he told her that he had ever only loved me." "It was something of an open question. I seem to remember saying something rather tactless-" "-that I had given Petyr my maidenhead. It was no slander of your own, my lord, but a tale Petyr himself spread about when it was Lysa who went to him that night." Will we ever know the half of the ruin that man wrought in a few short decades? "When he came to you tonight…" Tyrion asked, looking to the water. "How did you know he was lying? His being Littlefinger aside, I mean." There was a hint of pride in what Catelyn said next. "Something else Sansa told me. Petyr's mouth could lie, but his eyes could not. I asked him if there had ever been someone he loved. When he answered, he lied." Her rippling stilled, stopped. "Even as I reached for him, he asked me the same question." "And what did you tell him?" Tyrion asked before he could stop himself. "The truth." She looked across the water, to where the weirwood looked on. "Only Ned."
This is not a place for you, Imp, was the first thing through Tyrion's mind. Her words are not for you to hear, her grief is not for you to see. A sudden swell in the pool pushed the old gods from his mind, reminded him that among Lord Eddard and his ancestors, Tyrion was in the company of a dragon as well. "I rather feel I've expended what time I've come due here, my lady." he said, suddenly eager and more to leave it. "I sent Sansa to look for you, imagine my surprise when you turned up here." "Might you take me to her? I'm not much feeling up to waddling to her chamber unaccompanied. I'm ugly enough without an arrow through the nose I don't have. And where's the Lady Maegyr? I seem to recall the two of you being thick as thieves." "Talisa is in the grotto below, learning what she can of House Stark's past. We speak the True Tongue, she and I…so the Children are somewhat at ease in our presence." Pod said something about them, the Children of the Forest. "My former squire told me it took a Child for Sansa to get her words across to an Other." He tried to sound casual. "I like to think that I'm learning, my lord. Not so fast as Sansa, but then, I have rather more time with which to learn. You suppose that if I can speak to a Child, and one of them to an Other…" "The connection does draw itself, my lady." "You have not lost your touch. Outside White Harbor, I met one of them. Freezing Fog, he called himself, and he led a mob of dead children like a ghastly shepherd. Not for their efficacy, but for the terror they would strike in mortal men. It was he who lit the fireling, hoping, I gather, that she would manifest as singularly vengeful as I did." Tyrion kept pace with her as best he could, but his legs were bone and muscle and cramped with the ups and downs of Winterfell. "Perhaps he erred. There is no malice to be found in Shireen Baratheon that I've seen. All her time is spent with her lordly cousin in the forges, making more of those spectacular Tarly toys." "Freezing Fog did not strike me as the sort to err so. Shireen has yet to come face to face with a red priest, to say nothing of the one responsible for loss so overwhelming." Tyrion remembered well the iron in Varys' voice the night of the Blackwater. He knew what havoc she would wreak. "Who's to say she ever will? Others and their ilk run amok in the North, I doubt her god could be so potent as to protect her in such dire straits. This red priestess is dead, or at the least might as well be." "Or Freezing Fog has her in his grasp somewhere and plans to use her to incense Shireen." Tyrion shrugged. "If I may, my lady, your children are returned to you." Well, most of them. "Turn your mind to them, and away from this Freezing Fog."
Even with years of living in Winterfell, Catelyn lost her way more than once. "Everything is different now." she said, with doubt in her voice. "Better different than gone, my lady. I seem to recall getting beer and bacon from the kitchens somewhere down that way…" he gestured vaguely. "Which means the keep is this way." Catelyn finished, heading in the opposite direction. "The sept Ned built me was over here. I used to think a godswood was no more than a gloomy garden, while a sept was the house of the gods in the living world." "I used to think I'd grow as tall as Jaime." Tyrion replied bluntly, making her breath hitch with a giggle. Once out of the snow, Tyrion brushed the newest flakes out of his hair. He found Catelyn standing at the bottom of a winding stair, looking up. He let her gather herself before they ascended, but when they reached a door in the corridor at the top of the keep, she made no move to open it. "I think I'll go find Talisa." she said, sounding far away. "My lady, she's your daughter." Tyrion said, suddenly panicking a bit. "Surely she would want you nearby, and in the company of a Lannister at that." "My own flesh and blood, yes." She raised her hands in front of her. "Do you see flesh, my lord? Do you see blood? The river took as much as it gave, I fear. Should you have need of me, I'll be in the grotto." Abruptly she turned and left, leaving Tyrion with only the wind howling against the keep's stones outside. I appreciate the vote of confidence, he thought weakly. When he put his hand to the door, the cold seeped so suddenly into his flesh it went numb. With a curse muttered under his breath he pushed, the cold in the room flying out in a biting, numbing net. Even as he fought to keep his feet, the floor slick with ice, he remembered a nightmare a year and more past. When he looked up, he found Sansa Stark facing away from him, looking out the window, as she had in the nightmare. Right on cue, a snow-white owl soared in through the window and came to rest on her arm. "Sansa." His voice was just deeper than a squeak. Slowly she turned, eyes burning the same terribly icy blue they had in the dream. I know those eyes. Now, though, the beautiful face showed no indifference. When she moved nearer, he caught what should have been her reflection in the ice that covered the far wall. The sight of a thick white mantle quite absent in the waking world made Tyrion wonder if perhaps he might not simply faint. Tully eyes, he realized, looking at the ice. The white face that filled the mantle's hood was none mortal borne, but the eyes that stared out from it were the same as Lady Catelyn had, Prince Brandon as well. Sansa's eyes widened in the cold thing's face, and then the cold was gone. Perhaps it was fear, or the owl swooping back out the window, or even sheer reflex, but Tyrion found himself catching Sansa as she fell even as the cold that filled the room vanished. "Seven hells," he grunted, hefting her onto the bed before he waddled to the window and firmly shut it. I'm beginning to see why Varys hates magic so much. Hang demon voices, I'm sick of being scared out of my boots every time I turn around!
Sansa stirred behind him, blinking groggily before rubbing her eyes. Tyrion froze, feeling every bit the fawn stalked by an unseen pack. She seems alright, he thought, relief flooding him. At least I hope it's relief. Either that or I've just pissed myself. Her gaze snapped toward him when she realized she was not alone in the room, her eyes gone their proper Tully blue. Before his mind could come up with something to say, he was at her bedside and his mouth was moving. "Sansa! Are you alright!?" For her part, she simply seemed shocked to wake up with Tyrion in her room. "How did you get here, my lord?" she asked, as if their reunion was taking place over breakfast. "I looked for you…" she said, brow furrowing. "I set Jeyne to rest in the springs and decided some would do me good as well." Her lovely face fell. "My fault. I should have stayed in the godswood and waited for you." "In the godswood?" he parroted, utterly mystified. "I should think you met someone else before I came to. It's more difficult for her to make mischief when I'm in the godswood, doubly so in the grotto where her cold winds have no prayer of reaching me." "Who her?" Tyrion asked, voice a squeak. Sansa seemed to realize how frayed his nerves were, putting her hands on his shoulders. The panic that raced through him receded, the sharp edges of alarm dulled. Is this sheer exhaustion? Or something else? "I suppose by now you've learned what became of me after I was spirited out of King's Landing." she said. "I have. In my mind, it was you greeting us, not Brandon. Everyone thought he was dead…" "Theon Greyjoy had two orphans killed and their bodies burned. Bran spent some time beyond the Wall is all." "And what of you? What happened between Jon Snow leaving for the south and now?" Then Sansa Stark spun a yarn full of white owls, ice spiders, northern monsters, and a certain mantle-clad she-Other. "Her name is Howling Wind. I fell asleep thinking of Lady one evening, ignorant that I was in fact warging. Or rather, trying to. There was no Lady to find, I was trying to board a mirage, if you like. When no one was at my wheel, Howling Wind somehow took it for herself." She brushed her hair out of her eyes, smiling gently at the look on Tyrion's face. "It's not so perilous as it seems, my lord. Or so I've seen. Howling Wind is no more practiced in this dance than I am." She waved a hand. "But what became of you? I…I heard you killed Lord Tywin, but after that…" "Varys took me east. I got to see the dirty underside of slavery, then when I came into the company of Daenerys Targaryen I was freed and got to see the dirty overside of slavery. We tried to keep Meereen in good order, Daenerys even chained two of the dragons below the Great Pyramid. The situation had scarcely settled when the slavers decided it was a good time to bring a fleet against the city and an army or two as well." He shrugged. "The slave-soldiers and sellswords arrayed by the Ghiscari nobility did not fare well against Dothraki screamers and Unsullied phalanxes, to say nothing of wooden ships facing dragonfire. After that, Daenerys decided it was as good a time as any to leave. Once she landed on Dragonstone she might have remained there thanks to Jaime telling her the capital was standing on wildfire caches but for a certain King in the North." He cracked a thin apologetic smile. "Meeting a certain Ser Bonifer Hasty as well put the last of the dirt on any ambitions she held to sit the Iron Throne. She had your brother, she had a father she never even knew she had, what did she need that awful thing for? Even when the lords took her for their own, she had Drogon turn his black fire on the throne. I could have done without him buggering off into the west, but you can't have everything." His face faltered. "I killed Shae, Sansa." Hers might have been shaped from ice.
"Jaime freed me from my cell so that I might flee with Varys…but even in the darkness I knew my path took me below the Tower of the Hand. When I came out of the passage I was in my old chamber, and Shae was in my father's bed. I strangled her with the gold chain she wore, shot my father with his own crossbow and left without another word." Wetness trickled down past the nose he did not have. "No doubt my father thought all well in hand that night. I was to die come the morrow, or at the very least take the black, which amounts to the same thing. Not that I would ever have reached the Wall- I'd have jumped overboard before I took an order form the likes of Alliser Thorne or Janos Slynt. All the Stark men were dead, and House Lannister's grip on the throne was strong as it was like to get. Even Joffrey's death did not overmuch upset his plans. Now look what turns fate has taken. House Lannister has been reduced to a lone broken dwarf. Prince Brandon has a princess of his own, beautiful, dutiful, and even fertile. She even has the northern cast your brother does not. Then there's Princess Arya, and of course your good self. The architect behind this grand convergence, as has never been accomplished in all of Westeros' known history. The King in the North would never have left his homeland but for your advising him to court Daenerys, so simple a concept and yet so brilliant in practice. Its constituent parts can even come apart rather than break apart, there need be no wars to follow should the Others be defeated. But who would cry to live outside the protection of the dragon and the wolf? Who would elect to live outside this pretty circle that's been drawn, largely by you?" He sniffled. "A game people like Cersei, like Littlefinger, like Roose Bolton, like my father could not hope to understand, much less play." He suddenly felt so tired he sat on the floor, staring at Sansa's shins. "It wasn't just me, Tyrion." Her words made him look up even as she sat beside him, the cold of the floor no discomfort to her. "You laid the stones as well. In Meereen first, then in the south when Daenerys Targaryen took you to Dragonstone." She turned to him. "Have you not considered that one day, you might well lead all these lords come up from below the Neck?" "Never," he replied, feeling not an ounce of regret or wistfulness. I know what happens when I'm given power. "The westermen would not have me out of hand. The riverlands have had enough of Lannisters and their lackeys to last at least a generation." He didn't bother going on. Though I could. "Have you not considered that one day, you might lead all these lords from above the Neck?" Sansa gave a sad smile, one he knew to match what he felt. "Never. Bran is Prince of Winterfell, and with a wife and son of his own, as you pointed out. Besides, all this with Howling Wind would make me an ill fit for the center seat at the high table. I'm more fit for the empty moors and Haunted Forest now." "You are still Sansa Stark. Still the girl who would lead a room of frightened ladies in hymns and prayers, while Cersei drank and fumed." "And you are not the monster you account yourself, though I think you sometimes wish you could be. That makes me sad, Tyrion." "It would be simpler for everyone, I think, if I were no better than Joffrey or Ramsay." "No." she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, her Tully eyes staring into his. I must have a bit of Jaime in me, he thought. We both have a weakness for blue eyes. If only I was rid of my faults as easily as he. If only I lost my demons with my nose. "I am a broken man, Sansa. Done, and nothing for it. Hate carried me up the stairs to my father's privy, drink floated me across the Narrow Sea and I had Daenerys to carry me the rest of the way." "What is broken can be mended. All pain fades, if given enough time." "I carry Tysha with me still, the weight of the gold coin I gave her has never left my hand." "Then look for her when this is done, when the Others are defeated and the sun shines again." Her hand left his shoulder and found his face. "Until then your pain is mine, and I would see it end." Her lips found his scar, cold as they were soft, sweet as they were lush. The cold put him flat on his back, stars twinkling maddeningly in his eyes until he blinked them out. The tightness in his face had gone, the itch of the scar tissue absent. When he turned to face Sansa's mirror it was all he could do not to scream. The Tyrion if the days before the Blackwater looked back at him, nose and all, with the last of his tears falling from its tip.
