Chương 29: Back to Business, Part One

The morning the King's party rode out of Winterfell, I stood in the courtyard and watched two processions form at once, one loud and one quiet, and found myself grateful, not for the first time, that I had taken such good care in setting up my longer-term plans that I was able to enjoy the time I did have with my family before the start of canon.

Bran's things had been loaded onto a cart before dawn — a modest trunk of clothes, his practice sword, a stack of books Luwin swore he'd actually read if someone kept after him about it. He sat his smaller horse with a stiffness that gave away how nervous he was beneath the excitement, hands tight on the reins, eyes darting between Mother, Father, and the gate as if he couldn't decide which one he wanted to look at longest.

Rickard Karstark's men waited a little apart from the royal retinue's chaos, patient in that particular Northern way that never needed to announce itself. I moved to a spot by Bran's side and gripped his knee.

"You'll do fine," I told him.

"Karhold's hard men, but fair ones, and our blood besides. Listen to Harrion and Torrhen, keep your wits about you, and don't let them talk you into anything I wouldn't." Bran grinned, some of the stiffness easing out of his shoulders.

"You'd let me do plenty."

"Aye, that's the worry," I said, and ruffled his hair before he could duck away from it.

"Write to me. Not just Mother and Father — me. I want to hear about the mountain clans if Rickard ever takes you that far, and anything you learn about the old wars up that way. And Bran—" I held his eyes a moment, serious now.

"You're not being sent away. You're being sent somewhere that'll make you stronger, and you'll come home better for it. That's all this is. Just stick close to Summer — now that you've finally named him, you need to keep him closer. Keep him groomed, and fed." He nodded, steadier for it, and when Mother came to kiss his cheek and Father clasped his shoulder, I stepped back, giving his hair one last tousle, and let the family have its moment without my crowding it.

I'd meant every word to him, but it wasn't only comfort. In the story I remembered, Bran had broken his back before he ever had the chance to become anything but a bird's passenger, a vessel for someone else's war and machinations. Not this time. Whatever the Three-Eyed Raven wanted, it could go on wanting.

My brother would grow up whole, with steel in his hand and Karhold's hard lessons in his spine, and if some washed-up Targaryen wannabe playing at being an old god, buried beneath a weirwood, had plans for him, he'd have to make his case to me first. A few dozen yards off, in the greater press of the royal retinue's preparations, Jon and Theon were tightening their own saddle girths, readying for a very different ride. I crossed to them, boots crunching the churned mud and old snow of the yard.

"You've got everything?" I asked, mostly to have something to say. I'd gone over it with both of them twice already. Theon smirked, swinging up into his saddle with the easy arrogance he'd never fully lost, nor did I want him to.

"Enough coin, enough men, enough patience to survive weeks of Lannister company. Don't worry, Robb, we won't lose your favorite hostage on the road."

"He's not a hostage. Yet," I said, though we both knew that wasn't entirely true.

"He's a guest who wants to see the Wall, and you're doing him the courtesy of an escort so he doesn't get himself killed by wildlings or bad luck on the Kingsroad, and making sure he finds his way back to Winterfell safely after." Jon's expression was more thoughtful than Theon's, the way it usually was.

"And you want us to treat him as if he were a friend. I don't know why you trust him so much."

"That too," I admitted, because there was no use lying to Jon about it.

"Tyrion's the cleverest Lannister walking, cleverer than his father in some ways, but I believe he can be kind if shown the respect his own family has too often denied him. I'd rather know what he thinks of the Wall, and of us — so just talk to him, treat him as you would anyone else, and form your own opinions of him. He does like his wine, and between the two of you, you'll learn more from him, and about him, than you'd manage by trying." I gripped Jon's arm, then Theon's.

"And keep each other in one piece. I mean that."

"Since when did you start worrying about me," Theon said, though something in his face said he didn't mind it.

"Since always," I said.

"Go on. I want a full accounting when you're back — I'll have plenty of work waiting for you both, I'd wager." Then, quieter: "And Jon—" I dropped my voice, just for him, glancing at Ghost beside him.

"Keep practicing your warging, even when you're not alone. Don't let the training slip — think of it as practice for keeping it hidden while you build the skill. Also, trust Ghost, he's smarter than you." I finished it with a half hug. Jon nodded, and there was something steadying in the way he did it, the same quiet reliability that had always been the truest thing about him.

I watched them ride out through the gate a short while later, Tyrion Lannister perched on a sturdy garron between them, already talking with his hands to his new audience. The greater business of the day pressed in before I could dwell on it.

Robert's retinue was a slower, louder creature to move than Bran's small party, a hundred voices and twice that many horses, wagons creaking under the weight of southern excess even after a fortnight of Northern hospitality had lightened Robert's own mood considerably — helped along by a hunt that had passed without incident, no fall to mar it, since I'd kept close to Bran the entire day of it.

I found Father near the gate, already dressed for the road, Ice strapped across his back rather than left behind at the castle. I'd tried to convince him to leave it here, but he wouldn't hear of it, and I hadn't wanted to push harder — not when there was some chance, however slim, that the blade might yet help him change his own fate in King's Landing.

"You'll write," I said, not quite a question.

"Often as I'm able. And don't worry, Robb — I know you'll do fine without me, and I'll be back soon enough," Father said. His grey eyes lingered on me a moment, the same look he'd worn since the heart tree at the Wall, since he'd asked whether the scar had been worth it.

"You'll manage things here."

"I will," I said, and meant it as more than reassurance.

"The North will be fine. Just be safe in the South, Father." He studied me a moment longer, then nodded, once, the way he did when he'd decided something and didn't need to say it aloud. Sansa found me next, radiant in a traveling cloak Wynafryd had helped her choose, equal parts excited and terrified in a way that made her look younger than she was. I held her a moment longer than strictly necessary.

"You'll write to me too," I told her.

"And you'll remember what we talked about. Keep your own counsel close, be kind because it costs you nothing, and don't let anyone in that city convince you that kindness is the same thing as weakness."

"I'll remember. But please, Robb, look after Lady for me, and don't give her too many snacks — it's not proper and please have a talk with Myrcella she is upset you have yet to have a proper talk with her," she said. Even so, I knew the years ahead would test that harder than either of us could yet imagine. I'd done what I could to arm her for it — small things, careful things, nudges toward caution dressed up as a brother's ordinary affection — and it would have to be enough for now.

Robert clapped me on the shoulder before he mounted, hard enough to stagger a lesser man.

"Look after my girl," he said, meaning Myrcella. I understood well enough what he meant by it — that he trusted this house with anyone he cared for, which was no small thing from a man who trusted almost nothing anymore.

"And keep training like you have been. Half wish I could stay and spar you again myself, if my knees would forgive me for it." He laughed at his own joke, loud and easy. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"Your Grace honors me," I said, and bowed, and watched him laugh all the way up into his saddle. Then the horns sounded, the remaining direwolf pups howling their goodbyes along with them, and the great slow column of the South began to move. I stood in the gate with Mother, with Myrcella small and uncertain at my side, with Arya practically vibrating with the effort of not running after Sansa's horse, even though she'd told everyone that very morning how she couldn't wait for Sansa to leave.

I watched them go until the banners were only smudges of color against the white. It was only once the gates had been drawn properly shut, once the courtyard had exhaled and gone back to its ordinary rhythms of guards and servants and Mikken's hammer ringing from the forge, that I allowed myself to think properly about the other work the day still owed me. I found Smalljon in the yard not long after, hauling his own gear onto a horse bound for Last Hearth rather than the Wall or the Kingsroad.

He'd finished the greater part of his fostering months back in truth, though he'd lingered past the formal end of it, training with my guards, sparring with me, growing into something more than a ward — a friend, and I hoped, before long, something like a second captain for whatever army the North would eventually need to raise.

Today, though, I'd asked him to ride home, ostensibly to see his father and report on his fostering in person the way any dutiful son might, carrying with him a hint that the Umbers and their bannermen ought to start taking stock of their stores and prepping their logistics for an army — nothing more than a notion, for now, that my father had given warning of trouble brewing in the South.

"Come to see me off properly, then," Smalljon said, grinning as he cinched his saddle tight.

"Or come to give me one more errand before I go. I know that look, Robb."

"Both," I admitted, and drew him a little aside from the other men, out of easy earshot.

"You know I've valued your time here. More than I've said, probably."

"You've said plenty," he said, though he sobered some, sensing the shift in me.

"What is it?"

"I want you to tell your father something more from me. Not the polite version — the real one." I held his eyes.

"We're not calling the banners. Not yet. My father's ridden south to be Robert's Hand, and until he's seen the state of things there himself — the court, whatever's rotten under Jon Arryn's death — nothing moves. He wants eyes on the ground before anyone raises the alarm. But when the call comes, I want your father ready to move within the day, not the week."

Smalljon's jaw tightened, and something eager and grim moved behind his eyes — the look of a man who'd been waiting a long while for a purpose to sharpen himself against.

"You have my word. When will the call come?"

"I can't know for certain, but you'll be among the first to hear it," I said.

"It'll be written in the Old Tongue, sealed with my father's mark, and it won't waste time on courtesies. If your father ever receives a letter from me that opens with the old greeting instead of the common one — Fungr — he'll know it's real, and he'll know it's time. Everything else, every ordinary letter between now and then, means exactly what it says and nothing more. But that one word will mean everything."

Smalljon turned it over, and I watched understanding settle into him, the particular pride of a man trusted with something larger than himself.

"Old Tongue. Good thing you forced me to learn some of it, at least."

"Well, you certainly didn't make it easy," I said.

"Keep your father's men sharp, Smalljon. Keep training the way I taught you, and keep half an ear on how the other Northern houses are preparing. Keep your own arm in use too — I'll need it."

"You'll have it," he said, and then, because he was still Smalljon under all the new gravity, he grinned and added, "Try not to get yourself killed being clever while I'm gone. Somebody's got to be here to needle you when you're being a pompous Northern lord about something."

"I'll do my best to stay worthy of such high regard," I said, and clasped his forearm the way Northmen did, firm and sure.

"Go on. Give my regards to your father, and my thanks for lending me his son this long." I watched him ride out with a small escort of his own, north and east toward Last Hearth, and felt something settle into place that had nothing to do with strategy at all — the particular satisfaction of a friendship that had grown into something worth relying on. The rest of that first day went back to what felt like ordinary business.

I spent the hours with Jory, heads bent together over a map of the North in my solar, working out exactly which lords that single coded word would need to reach. It would have to be men we trusted from our closer household guard, riding out in turns to the nearer houses, letters sealed and written in the Old Tongue — less as an unbreakable cipher and more as a second lock on a door already guarded by trusted hands.

Even the lords who couldn't read the script themselves would have the trained men who knew the letter's contents standing before them, ready to speak the words plainly once the door was shut and the servants sent away.

"Karstark's already won over, with Bran riding in as we speak," Jory said, tracing the map with a blunt finger.

"Umber the same, with Smalljon just gone home to prime his father. That leaves the Mormonts, the Manderlys, the Hornwoods, Cerwyn close by — a full enough circuit, if we mean to do it properly."

"We do," I said.

"And the Boltons." Jory's finger stopped.

"Roose."

"Not for the same purpose," I said, and found my mind drifting, unbidden, to a conversation with Father some months back. I'd been the one to first raise the notion of Domeric Bolton finishing his fostering at Winterfell rather than in the Vale, that evening at supper when I'd talked Father into fostering Smalljon and the others — it felt like a decade ago now, though it hadn't been much more than two years.

Father had liked the idea then, and it had taken him this long, between one thing and another, to actually write to Roose about it properly. Roose hadn't agreed at once. That, too, I remembered clearly, because it had needled at me faintly at the time, in a way I couldn't quite put words to.

Father had read me the reply himself, that careful, bloodless script that seemed to characterize everything the man touched — my son is well settled in the Vale, and I see no cause to disturb a fostering so near its end over a matter of a single year. He will come to Winterfell gladly once his time there is done, and I thank you for the honor of the invitation.

It would do him good, I think, to know other children of his own age — your own son, perhaps, or your daughter Sansa, though I make no assumptions as to what either acquaintance might grow into for the Boltons are ever loyal. Courteous. Reasonable. The Boltons are ever so loyal, or so it reads. Nothing in it a man could take offense at. And yet something about the shape of it has stayed with me since, the way a small stone in a boot doesn't hurt exactly, but makes itself known with every step regardless.

I couldn't have said, then or now, precisely what it was that unsettled me about a man agreeing to exactly what I'd asked for, in exactly the manner any careful lord might. Perhaps that was the whole of it — that Roose Bolton did nothing without consideration, and a man who considered everything was a man who'd already considered you as well, long before you'd finished considering him. I just hoped he wouldn't consider putting a knife in my back, this time around.

Domeric would be arriving any day now, the year in the Vale finally behind him, and some part of me was almost looking forward to finally putting a face to the name I'd been turning over in my head for two years. Another part of me, quieter and less easily dismissed, thought it might be worth watching him rather more closely than I'd watched the Karstark or Umber boys who'd come before him — even if the stories held true, and he really was a decent young man, nothing like his father.

"Not the Boltons," I said again, half to myself, half to Jory.

"Domeric's fostering here soon enough regardless, and I'd rather learn the son before I decide how much to trust the father. We'll leave Roose out of this particular circuit. For now." Jory raised a brow at that, but didn't press it, which was one of the things I valued most in him.

"The rest, then. When do we ride?"

"Give it a week," I said.

"Long enough that no one thinks it a strange rush, and short enough that we're not wasting time if word from Father comes early." I looked back down at the map, at all those small dots of castles and keeps scattered across a land I meant to hold together even as I marched south, in time, to claim still more of it — all of it built on nothing more than blood, old words, and the patient, careful work I'd put into the men and the plans around them.

"We could tell everyone it's about the wedding — preparations, invitations, seeing which houses will send their finest to Winterfell to celebrate a Stark and a Baratheon becoming one family. A Northern melee, rather than a full tourney, to celebrate Father becoming Hand, and my own engagement as well."

"That's a great idea," Jory said.

"We could also have Mikken prep some of those quick-mold spears for the levy we were looking at with Luwin — as many as we can manage at least."

"That's a great idea, Jory — you should go check on his progress," I said, though privately I wasn't sure how much it would help. I only had a rough idea of casting and molds myself, but I'd only shown Mikken the concept after consulting with Jory and Luwin, and Mikken had seemed more confident about it than I felt, so perhaps he'd worked something out on his own. With that thought, I let myself smile.

"Get some rest, Jory. We've a long week of quiet, ordinary business ahead of us, before the real work starts."