Chapter 4: Black Wings

Two years after his return from the war, Eddard found Benjen below the earth before dawn. One lamp burned at Lyanna’s feet. The masons had not yet carved her face. Eddard had sent the last clay study back and kept putting off the summons to inspect its replacement. Here there was only the plain lid, the iron sword and the grey dust beginning to gather in its letters. Benjen sat beside it with a black cloak over one knee. He was trying to drive a silver wolf clasp through wool too thick for the pin. Each hard shove bent it farther.

“You are bending it,” Eddard said.

“It has yet to survive this cloak,” Benjen replied. “Perhaps black brothers have no use for silver wolves after all.”

Benjen’s hands stopped. “Have you come to ask me to stay again?”

“I came to ask you to wait. A moon, at least.”

“And then another.”

Eddard sat upon the step beside him. Benjen moved the cloak clear of the damp stone, but would not look at him.

“You have scarcely left her tomb these past three days,” Eddard said. “Do you think I cannot see why you are going?”

The lamp flame bent in a draught. Benjen watched it until Eddard reached to turn the wick down.

“I helped her,” Benjen said. “She asked me to bring her mare, and I did. I could have refused. I could have told someone.”

Eddard’s hand stopped upon the lamp.

“She trusted me to keep quiet. I was pleased that she had asked me instead of Brandon.” Benjen looked at the uncarved stone. “I thought I was helping her.”

Eddard had suspected. “You knew she meant to meet Rhaegar?”

“I knew she meant to meet him.” Benjen looked up sharply. “Do not give me more knowledge than I had. I thought she would be back by sunrise. Brandon left Winterfell whenever the mood took him. Father cursed, Mother wept, and Brandon always came back laughing. Why should Lyanna not?”

“Aerys was hunting the Knight of the Laughing Tree,” Eddard said. “Did you know that?”

“No. Nor what had happened to her escort. She told me none of that.” Benjen drew a breath. “Did she curse me?”

“No.”

“Did she speak of me?”

Eddard could not give him the answer he wanted. “She was dying, Ben. She asked me to take her home.”

Benjen lowered his head. Eddard put a hand upon his shoulder and left it there.

Benjen looked at the black wool. “You still want me to stay.”

“Robb knows your step. Jon speaks your name whenever the gate opens. I would keep the brother left to me.” Eddard held his shoulder. “You have not sworn at the Wall. There are lands I could give you, a household—”

“I do not want a hall.” Benjen bent for his cloak. “If I stay now, we shall have this quarrel every winter.”

“The Wall will not mend what happened.”

“I know.” Benjen fastened the wolf clasp. It hung crooked on his shoulder. “But they need men.”

Eddard straightened the clasp for him. Neither spoke while he did it.

Benjen took one last look at the uncarved tomb and walked out beneath the stone gaze of their dead.

* * *

Benjen’s spare boots hung with the soles outward behind a grey gelding’s saddle. A black roll of blankets crossed the cantle. One packhorse carried oats, an oiled cloak and a wicker raven cage that smelled of wet feathers and old droppings. Jon watched the preparations from the nursery window. He had packed for enough departures to recognise which things a man kept within reach and which he hoped not to need. He could find no quarrel with Hullen’s work. It was Benjen’s reason for going that he could not accept.

Rain silvered the yard. Wylla carried Jon down beneath her green wool mantle, holding the edge closed with her teeth while he worked one arm into his coat. The coat was black because black dye hid mud until it dried; the left cuff had already faded brown. His thumb missed the horn toggle twice. Cold made the cord stiff and his hand stiffer. He held both still for Wylla rather than waste a third attempt.

“There,” she said, fastening him in three quick movements and pulling up the hood. “Keep those hands inside until we reach the gallery.”

Robb stood beneath the gallery with one mitten in Catelyn’s hand and one boot planted proudly in a puddle. Mud marked his cheek. Every horse led past received the same claim.

“Mine,” Robb declared, pointing at Benjen’s gelding.

Catelyn followed his finger. “That is Benjen’s horse, Robb.”

“My horse. Benjen can have a turn.” Benjen came beneath the gallery and swept him up.

“A generous offer,” Benjen said.

“Mind his head,” Catelyn said as Benjen swung him round.

Benjen tucked Robb securely against his shoulder. “I have him, my lady.”

Benjen kissed Robb’s muddy cheek and mittened hand, then gave him back. Jon waited until his uncle crouched before him. The black cloak smelled of horse sweat, hearth smoke and the pine soap used in Winterfell’s lower yard. He remembered Benjen Stark riding beyond the Wall and failing to return. He had never known enough about that ranging to name its day or guide men to the place where he vanished. Worse, it lay years beyond the journey being prepared in front of him. He could scarcely explain tomorrow to Robb, much less give Benjen a warning that would remain useful for years.

“You will write?” Jon asked.

“When I reach Castle Black.”

“Before that. From the Gift.”

Benjen crouched lower, bringing the silver clasp level with Jon’s eyes. “From the Gift as well.”

Jon touched the bent silver wolf. He had shortened his arguments to what his mouth could reliably say. Eddard had already offered Benjen land and a household; repeating that offer would gain nothing. He would ask for letters, and make the promise specific enough that his uncle might keep it.

“You could stay.”

“Your father asked me.”

“I am asking.”

Benjen drew off his glove. His bare hand enclosed Jon’s cold fingers. “I know.”

Jon stared at their joined hands. He would not ask again before the whole yard.

“Tell me before you go beyond the Wall.”

“If I can send a raven, I will. They must teach me the woods first. I doubt the Lord Commander means to lose me on my first day.”

“And if you are hurt, someone else must write.”

The faint smile left Benjen’s face. “Aye. I will tell them.”

Jon had sent men away with promises to write to their families. At sea, a letter might wait weeks for a port, and by the time it reached home the worry had already done its work. He remembered his wife keeping the last one beside the telephone. Benjen had ravens. Jon meant him to use them.

“Remember the ravens,” Jon said.

“I will.” Benjen squeezed his hand before rising. Arthur gripped his forearm.

“Come back when they can spare you,” Arthur said. “The boys will want to show you what they have learnt.”

“Keep swords from both boys until I am too far north to hear the noise,” Benjen replied.

Benjen mounted, settled his black cloak clear of the saddle and leaned down to check the girth. The gelding shifted from its puddle, scraping iron over wet stone. Hullen checked the packhorse.

Hullen gave the gelding’s shoulder a last slap. “Change to the spare if he favours that foot again.”

“I heard you the first two times,” Benjen said. “You sound like my nephew.”

Eddard put one hand upon his brother’s boot. “Write. For me as well as the boys.”

The gate opened. Three black brothers passed under the arch. Benjen followed and looked back once. Then stone swallowed him.

Jon’s body leaned after the vanished horse. Every muscle urged pursuit although the road, four mounted men and his own short legs made pursuit useless. He planted both boots in the mud and kept them there. Breath came wrong. He counted it until the next one came more cleanly.

Robb pulled free of Catelyn and started towards the gate. Jon caught his mitten.

“He is gone,” Jon said.

“Benjen back,” Robb insisted.

“Not today.” The words broke on the last sound. Jon hated that, but repeated them. “Not today.”

Arthur knelt in the mud and held out his arms. “Come here, both of you.”

Jon’s face was wet before he reached him. He kept Robb’s mitten in his hand while Jory ordered the gate closed.

At supper the empty chair was worse than the road. Benjen had always come late, smelling of wet leather, to steal crisp skin from the capon and teach Robb to beat a spoon upon the board. That night a servant removed his unused cup. Steam rose from beef broth thick with leeks and barley. Brown loaves were broken, hot enough to sting the fingers. Every opening of the hall door turned Jon’s head once. Each time he made himself return to the bowl.

Eddard moved Jon’s stool nearer his own chair. “Eat a little.”

Jon swallowed, though his throat hurt. “You could have made him stay.”

“I could.”

“Why did you not?”

Eddard watched the empty place. “Because he asked me to let him go.”

Jon disliked the answer. In another life he had given orders men hated and expected them obeyed. Benjen might have hated Eddard for a season; at least he would have been here. He took another spoonful rather than say it.

Under the table Robb pressed his mitten against Jon’s knee. He still wore it on the hand Benjen had kissed. Jon held it until the bowl was empty.

That night he woke listening for Benjen’s boots in the passage. He knew his uncle was gone, but kept waiting for the step outside the nursery. At last he called Arthur’s name. The knight appeared with Dawn in one hand and his belt unlaced.

“Take me to Benjen’s chamber,” Jon said.

“He is not there.”

“I know.” Jon pushed the blanket away. “Take me.”

Arthur set Dawn aside, wrapped the trailing blanket around him and carried him down one passage. Fresh rushes showed a pale square where Benjen’s sea chest had stood. His bed had been stripped, and the hearth was cold. Jon looked from one to the other.

“Will Poole give his room to someone else?”

“When there are guests to house, perhaps.”

“There are other rooms.”

Arthur settled him higher against his shoulder. “Benjen will not find himself turned away from the gate.”

“He should not have to ask.”

Eddard came with a lamp and a wolfskin robe flung over his nightshirt. He stopped in the doorway. “There will be a room for him whenever he comes home.”

Jon looked up at him. “When?”

“I do not know.” Eddard set the lamp down and lifted him. “We shall hear from him.”

Against his shoulder Jon caught the smell of sleep, lamp smoke and cold air. He remembered his grown daughter embracing him in a hallway, her grey braid brushing his arm while she complained that he was getting thin. He had been the older one then. Accepting care from Eddard took more getting used to than giving it had, but he held him all the same.

“I have you,” Eddard murmured.

Jon held him until the lamplight blurred. Eddard did not ask whether he was crying.

Wylla waited at the nursery door. She took him from Eddard, settled his face against the familiar hollow beneath her throat, and rubbed his back while the men stood uncertainly in the passage.

“Go to bed,” she told them softly. “I have him.”

She lay beside Jon until his breathing slowed. Her loosened brown braid lay across the coverlet, close enough for him to catch its end. When he woke once more, her hand was still beneath his cheek, the rough seam at the base of her thumb as familiar as the pillow.

* * *

A hurried line from the Gift reached them first, as promised. Benjen’s longer letter came from Castle Black before Poole cleared his chamber. The drenched bird bit the rookery boy, scattered three cups and yielded its message only for mutton. In the solar Catelyn made room for both boys. Robb wanted the wet feather stuck to the wax; Jon wanted the road accounted for.

Jon leaned over the table as Eddard broke the wax. “Read it.”

Arthur turned from the window to listen. Eddard glanced at Luwin, who glanced at Jon. “Benjen reached Castle Black. His gelding went lame near the Gift, so a crofter’s son now owns an excellent horse with a doubtful leg.”

Robb frowned. “My grey horse? Bring him back.”

“Benjen assures you the grey was never yours.”

“Mine,” Robb insisted.

“He writes that the Wall is greater than songs make it and colder than stone has any right to be in summer. His brothers laughed at the silver clasp, so he traded it for a plain black toggle and two pairs of wool hose.”

Eddard went quiet over the next lines. His thumb covered part of a sentence. Jon watched it, but did not ask.

“For Robb,” Eddard read at last. “Your horses remain safe, though I make no pledge concerning bears. For Jon: I have not forgotten your face. Do not learn too many words before I return, or I shall have to begin our acquaintance again.”

“He wrote that?” Jon asked.

Eddard turned the page so he could see the cramped lines, though he could not yet read them. Jon touched the place his father showed him.

Robb succeeded in stealing the feather. He sniffed it, made a face and offered it to Jon. Two barbs had split in the rain. Jon closed his fist around the black shaft anyway.

After Wylla took the boys, Catelyn asked, “What did Benjen write for you?”

Arthur remained by the window. Eddard folded the page. “He asks whether I am angry with him.”

“Are you?” Catelyn asked.

“A little.”

“Then tell him that. He will know if you pretend otherwise.”

Eddard found a clean sheet. For a while the quill hovered above it. “He should be here.”

Catelyn took the sealing wax from beneath his elbow and laid it where he would not knock it to the floor. “Write, Ned.”

He wrote that the boys asked for Benjen every day and that Hullen wanted the horse brought back if its leg mended. He went on to ask about the men who had taken his brother north, the food at Castle Black and whether the new boots had held against the cold. At the bottom, before he could find another question to ask, he wrote that he missed him.

* * *

Later that year the nursery cups caused more talk than the boxes. Wylla packed three each morning: one for herself and one for each boy. When a kitchen girl returned with two, Jon pointed beside the basket’s handle.

“One gone.”

“Wylla’s is below.” He nodded and returned to fitting a wheel upon its peg. The girl looked at Nan. “Does he do that with everything?”

“There were three yesterday,” Nan said.

“My brother is four and still takes what he is given,” the girl murmured.

Jon heard her. He could have explained the missing cup in fewer words than she had spent wondering at it, but his tongue had trouble with longer sentences when he was tired. He pushed the wheel against the peg. It caught crookedly. A small hand was a maddening tool for a man who remembered repairing a pump in failing light.

Robb wanted the cart. Jon held it away from him until he had turned the wheel straight, then let him drag it across the floor. Robb made the noise of a horse. Jon watched the wheel wobble and wished for a washer.

“He hardly plays,” the girl murmured.

“Let them have their game,” Nan said.

A woman fetching linen bent close to the girl. “My aunt says those pale hairs—” Jon looked up. She drew the folded linen against her chest and glanced towards the door.

“Your aunt has never washed his hair.” Wylla had entered with Arthur. “I have. It tangles like any other boy’s.”

“You have work elsewhere,” Arthur said. Both women straightened and left without looking at Jon. “They might remember whose room this is.”

“They will remember what they are meant to be doing in it.” Wylla knelt and eased the peg from Jon’s reddened fingers. She rubbed the sore place, then put the cart on the table, beyond Robb’s reach.

Jon had heard adults discussing clever children before. Usually they forgot the child could hear them. He had disliked it then, standing at the other end of the room with a daughter who wanted to go home. He disliked it more from the floor.

“Want water,” he said.

Wylla kissed his temple and fetched it. She did not ask him to count the cups again for Arthur. The knight crouched to examine the wheel instead, turning it slowly while Robb explained where the horse ought to go.

* * *

Arthur began with feet. He drew a charcoal line across unused boards in the covered yard and made Jon walk heel to toe. Jon managed five steps, hurried the sixth, and sat down hard.

“Again,” Arthur said. “This time shorten the fifth step before your ankle turns beneath you.”

Robb, waiting beside the line, flung himself onto a pile of straw and announced, “Better.”

“You were not falling until you threw yourself into the straw,” Arthur told Robb.

“It did not hurt,” Robb said, patting the straw.

Jon smiled and went back to the line. “Can I have a sword now?” Robb asked.

“When you can stop because I call, turn without tangling your own feet and fall without breaking a wrist.”

“Tomorrow?” Robb asked.

“Show me that you can stop today,” Arthur said.

The first pony came sooner. Hullen led out a shaggy brown gelding called Moth, old enough to distrust every new contrivance and short enough for Catelyn to tolerate. Jon smelled warm hide, hay and the sharp leather oil upon the saddle. He had been looking forward to this since waking. He put two fingers beneath the girth, followed the leather until he found no twist, and looked into Moth’s mouth while Hullen showed him the mild iron bit.

“What makes him shy?” Jon asked.

“Blue cloth in wind, pigs beneath a fence and boys who kick,” Hullen said.

Jon looked for blue cloth before Arthur lifted him. His knees scarcely reached beneath the saddle flaps. Moth waited while Hullen shortened the leathers, then tried to bite the end of the lead.

Eddard came into the yard. “Already?”

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“He has asked every morning for a fortnight,” Arthur said. “Hullen has the lead.”

Eddard ran a hand over the old pony’s neck. “A walk, then.”

Jon tried to settle his hips to Moth’s rolling gait. His mind knew the motion; his legs gripped against it. Hullen reached up and loosened one knee with two fingers.

“Let him carry you.”

Moth stopped to bite at a post. Hullen pulled his head away. “Not the timber.”

Wylla, crossing the yard with warm milk, laughed. “Perhaps he is still hungry.”

“He is always hungry,” Hullen said. “Like the other one.” Robb looked up from the apple he had been saving for Moth and took a guilty bite.

By the second circuit Jon’s thighs burned. He asked Hullen to stop and found his knees trembling when the groom lifted him down.

“Here,” he said, touching the rubbed place beside his knee.

Hullen checked the saddle leather, then the boy’s leg. “Tomorrow we see how you walk.”

Wylla put warm milk into Jon’s hands and tucked her cloak around him. Honey clung to the rim. Eddard sat on the mounting block beside him while Robb begged for his turn.

That afternoon he slept through dinner.

* * *

The raven came during a rainstorm near the end of Jon’s third year. Water kept the boys from the yard, so after dinner—oat porridge with apples cooked soft in butter—Arthur drew his charcoal line across the nursery boards. Jon crossed it ten times before his right foot began to drag.

“Rest,” Arthur said.

Robb examined Jon’s knees, then shook both his own until he toppled sideways laughing. “I shake more.”

“You fall more,” Jon said, and went to sit by the shutter.

Arthur stepped into the passage to fetch a dry cloth for the water creeping beneath the shutter. The raven landed upon the outer sill. It was an ordinary rookery bird, black feathers oily in the wet and one tail quill broken short. It cocked one bright eye at the boys.

“Crow,” Robb whispered.

Raven, Jon thought, but did not spend breath upon the correction. A bread crust lay beneath the settle. Hunger struck him. It was not his mild wish for more apple. It narrowed the world to grease soaked into hard bread. Near. Food. Take. The room dropped away. Four black toes opened. Wings caught air. The sill fell beneath him and Winterfell’s roofs spread grey and shining under rain. Chimney smoke bent east. In the yard below, a horse became warmth moving under hide; a man became a pale face tipped towards the weather. The broken tail dragged. The bird’s body corrected without asking him how. He tried to spread the wings farther and felt the pull along their narrow bones. Air lifted him above the ridge of a roof. He wanted to climb higher.

A bell clanged. The raven banked. For one wild moment Jon forgot the room, the small legs and the brother shouting below him. Then hunger turned the bird back. It squeezed through the shutter gap, dropped beneath the settle and took the crust. Robb held still, delighted by the broken rule. A gust struck the shutter. The gap narrowed. The raven flung itself towards light and met oak. One wing hit first. Pain tore through Jon’s shoulder though nothing in the nursery had touched him. He reached for his own body. There was no road. Warm blood ran over his lip. His heel slipped from the settle. The little wooden horse fell from his hand. Through the bird he saw a dark-haired boy strike the floor; through the boy he felt claws scraping stone. Porridge flooded his mouth. Robb screamed. Two terrors existed at once, neither wholly his and both impossible to leave.

Then Arthur called, “Jon!”

* * *

Uncle Arthur reached him before the wooden horse stopped rocking. Boots crossed rushes. A scabbard struck the doorpost. Arthur’s first order cut through Robb’s crying.

“Do not touch him.”

The raven hit stone again. Arthur dropped beside Jon. The boy lay slack, eyes closed, with blood trickling from one nostril. Two fingers found the pulse beneath his jaw. Arthur cleared the sour milk from his mouth and turned him so he could breathe. He called his name twice without an answer.

“Jon. Look at me.” This time Jon’s eyelids fluttered. He tried to focus, but the knight’s pale eyes doubled. Behind him the raven dragged one wing across the oak settle.

“Bird,” Jon croaked.

Arthur followed his gaze. Wylla ran in with a basin. She saw Jon on the floor and let it fall. Water spread through vomit and carried oat husks into the rushes.

“Seven save us.”

“Fetch Luwin.”

“What happened?”

“Now, Wylla.” She ran. Arthur threw a blanket over the raven. At the first muffled wingbeat, Jon’s arms jerked against the floor. Arthur froze.

Robb had backed against the wall, bare feet in dirty water. “Crow hurt Jon.”

“Did the bird strike him before he fell, or did Jon touch it?” Arthur asked Robb.

“Both fell,” Robb said, pressing his back harder to the wall. “He did not touch it.”

Arthur gathered the blanket carefully. His hands knew how to hold a struggling creature without crushing it. For one instant Jon saw through the raven’s black eye: the knight bent over wool, the red-haired child pressed to stone, his own small body twisted among the rushes. Then the blanket closed and tore the sights apart. Jon vomited again. Arthur put the bundled bird into the wicker linen basket, tied the slatted lid and returned before the spasm ended. He lifted Jon against his chest, head low. Mail rings pressed cold through the child’s tunic.

“Stay with me, Jon. Take my hand. Can you hear me?” Arthur said.

Jon gripped Arthur’s fingers. “Trying. Bird still hurts.”

Luwin arrived with Wylla, Catelyn and Jory. He knelt in the wet rushes, his chain swinging as he felt Jon’s skull. Wylla held a cloth beneath the bleeding nose while he opened the boy’s eyelids and brought a lamp close. She answered his questions: porridge, apple and milk, the same as Robb; no physic or anything from her locked cupboard.

Catelyn drew Robb to her. “Tell me. Slowly.”

“It ate the bread. Then it hit the wall. Jon fell too.”

“Where did the bread come from?”

“I put it there.” Shame crumpled his face.

“A crust did not make your brother fall.” She kissed his hair. “You did not do this.”

Jon tried to sit and sagged against Arthur. The bleeding had stopped. “Bed,” Luwin said. “He struck his temple, but he may have swooned first. I will stay.”

“His shoulder hurt when I lifted him.” Arthur watched Jon’s face as Luwin moved the arm and felt along the collarbone. There was no break he could find. The knight had seen Jon’s arms jerk with the hidden bird’s wings; he would ask about that when the boy could answer without being sick. He kept Jon’s head supported until Luwin said he might move him.

Servants were gathering outside. “Close the door, Jory,” Catelyn said. “No one makes an omen of a sick child.”

Eddard arrived after dark, called from a miller’s plea in the winter town with Stark guards riding at his heels. Jon woke beneath his hand.

“Father.” He reached until Eddard caught his fingers.

“I am here.”

“My head hurts.” Jon touched the swelling. “It hurt before I fell.”

Eddard eased his hand away. Luwin told him about the swoon, bleeding and blow at the temple while Robb demonstrated with a carved horse. Catelyn stopped him after the second fall.

“Will it happen again?” she asked.

“I cannot say.”

“Then the boys are not left alone near that window.”

“I went for a cloth,” Arthur said.

“Send a servant next time.” She spoke without heat. Eddard looked from Arthur to the shutter.

“Mend the catch. Luwin, stay until he sleeps.”

Catelyn took Robb upstairs. Wylla straightened the coverlet and left the carved horse beside Jon’s reaching hand. He heard Mikken mending the catch and servants scraping the settle away from the window. Luwin checked his eyes again and wiped his lip, leaving only when he slept, with orders to call if the bleeding returned. Arthur remained, Dawn beside his chair. When Jon woke thirsty, the knight held his cup.

“Shut the door,” Jon said.

Arthur set down the cup and did so. Jon waited until he returned to the chair.

“I saw through the raven.”

Arthur glanced at the covered basket. “When it came through the window?”

“Before. I saw the roofs, then the bread. It wanted that so badly I could hardly think.” Jon pressed his palm against the blanket. Skinchanging. He had wondered when the Stark gift would show itself in him. In the books it had come with wolves; his first taste was a raven frantic over a bread crust. He curled his fingers into the blanket.

“You were awake?”

“I felt the settle and the wings together. My shoulder hurt when it hit the shutter. It has stopped now.” Jon looked up. “How long before I answered? Was I breathing?”

“Aye. I turned you when you were sick. You opened your eyes, but did not answer for perhaps four breaths. Then your arms jerked each time it beat its wings beneath the blanket.”

“You were stopping me seeing.”

“I did not know.”

“That is why I am telling you. If it happens again, I need you beside me.” Jon reached for the cup; Arthur helped him drink. “I tried to come back. I could see myself on the floor, but could not make that body move.”

“Do you mean to try again?”

“I did not mean to this time.”

“Tell me when you feel it beginning. Sit before your legs give way; I will keep you from falling.”

“Call my name. I heard you. You must tell me what happens here. I cannot watch both.”

Arthur closed his hand around Jon’s. “We shall begin with that.”

A step sounded outside. Jon stopped speaking. Arthur looked towards the door, then back at him.

“Not yet,” Jon whispered.

Eddard came in with Luwin and Wylla before Arthur could answer. Jon drew the wooden horse onto his lap.

“My throat hurts,” he told them. He swallowed for Luwin, followed the maester’s fingers with his eyes and answered about the sickness and swelling. He said nothing of the view from beneath the blanket.

“Sleep if you can. I will look in again,” Luwin said. “No yard tomorrow.”

Jon’s objection became a yawn. Eddard covered his feet while Arthur carried the basket carefully into the adjoining room. Wylla brought barley mashed in broth and helped him eat.

“You will be here when I wake?” Jon asked when the bowl was empty.

“Yes.” His father drew the chair nearer.

* * *

The roots were white.

They crowded the hollow beneath Jon’s feet, thick enough in places that he could walk upon them without touching earth. Between two lay a skull with fine roots running through its teeth. He drew his foot away.

Somewhere above him, the raven dragged its injured wing across bark. Pain caught beneath his shoulder.

He could still feel the blanket over his legs. Uncle Arthur’s finger rested inside his fist, warm and rough against his palm. Jon held to it as he looked around.

A man sat beyond the roots.

White hair lay across his shoulders and caught among the wood behind his head. His cloak had rotted where it touched the ground. One hand rested palm upwards upon his knee, with a root passing between the fingers. Jon looked at the face and wished he had not. Something pale moved in the empty eye socket.

The other eye watched him.

Jon stepped back. A root curled around his ankle.

“Let go.”

“You reached first,” the man said.

“I was looking at the bird.”

“And when it flew, you went with it.”

Jon pulled his foot. The root held.

“Did you bring me here?”

“I found you with the raven.” The man studied him. “Who taught you to keep hold of yourself?”

“No one.”

Above them, the raven beat its good wing. Winterfell’s roofs swept beneath Jon, wet stone shining through the rain. Then he was looking into the nursery. Arthur sat beside the bed. Eddard was farther away, near the hearth.

The child beneath the blanket had his eyes shut.

Jon tried to move that child’s hand.

“You know where to look,” the old man said. “You knew it while the bird was struggling.”

“I could see myself on the floor.”

“And you understood what you were seeing.”

Jon bent and worked his fingers beneath the root. The bark scraped his skin.

“What do you want?”

“To understand why I cannot follow you.” The red eye remained upon him. “I have watched men who have not yet been born. When I look ahead of you, what I see will not hold.”

“I do not know why.”

That much was true. He knew no more about his arrival in this world than he had when he first opened his eyes in it.

“Then let me look.”

“At what?”

The blanket against his legs faded.

He heard rain striking a window.

For a moment the roots were gone. He stood in a kitchen he had known for years, with daylight upon the table and his wife beside him. She was reaching past his shoulder for something in the cupboard. Her sleeve brushed his arm.

She laughed.

Jon turned towards her before he could stop himself.

“Where is that?”

The voice came from inside the kitchen.

White roots pushed between the floor tiles. His wife’s hand remained raised beside the cupboard, but he could no longer see her face. Beyond her shoulder, the red eye moved towards the window.

Jon tried to force the memory away. He thought of the nursery, the brazier, Arthur’s hand. His wife’s laughter came again, and for an instant he wanted to hear the rest of what she had been saying.

The old man leaned forward.

“Who is the woman?”

“Get out.”

“Whose memory is this?”

Jon could scarcely feel Arthur now.

He had kept that room through death. He remembered meals eaten there, the cupboard door that would not close properly, her annoyance when he left soil upon the floor. He had never needed to guard it from anyone.

The pale man was waiting for an answer.

“You have no right to it,” Jon said.

“Show me the room again.”

“No.”

He sought the pressure against his palm. For a dreadful moment he found only bark. Then something moved against his fingers, and he felt the familiar roughness of Arthur’s skin.

Jon closed his fist.

The kitchen disappeared. Cold struck his bare feet. He was among the roots again, with the old man watching him more closely than before.

Jon braced his free foot against the white coil and pulled. Pain ran up his leg. Beneath it came another hurt, dull and heavy at his temple.

He knew that pain. He had struck his head upon the nursery floor.

“Stay,” the old man said.

Jon dragged at his trapped ankle. The blanket caught around his knees. A hand enclosed his fist.

White wood cracked.

He woke trying to wrench his leg free of the bedclothes.

“Jon.”

Arthur caught his shoulder. Jon seized the knight’s wrist with his other hand and held it. The brazier glowed beside the wall. Eddard was coming towards them from the hearth.

His ankle hurt. When Arthur drew the blanket aside, there was nothing upon it.

“Another fit?” Eddard asked.

“He woke struggling.”

His father felt his brow, then went to fetch Luwin. Jon waited for the door to close.

“There was a man,” he whispered. “In the dream. He held my leg with a root.”

Arthur stayed close enough that Jon did not have to raise his voice.

“What man?”

“White hair. One red eye. He wanted to know why he could not see what would happen to me.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“No.”

Brynden Rivers. Bloodraven.

Jon kept the names to himself.

“I could feel your hand while I was there,” he said. “Then I nearly lost it.”

Arthur settled upon the edge of the bed. “I have you.”

Jon nodded, still gripping his wrist.

When he closed his eyes, he saw the kitchen window.

He opened them again.

Luwin found no fresh hurt. He asked his questions, changed the cloth against Jon’s temple and left Arthur beside the bed. Jon waited until his footsteps had faded along the passage.

Jon had read about Bloodraven in another life: the kinslayer with a thousand eyes and one, one of the Great Bastards. He remembered the old man in the tree teaching Bran to see through ravens and weirwoods, but the books had left much of Brynden’s purpose unexplained. Jon had his suspicions. He would be a fool to mistake them for knowledge now, with the man reaching into memories he had thought were his alone.

Bran had not even been born. Whatever Bloodraven intended for him, Jon would keep the boy out of that cave. He would have to learn enough to offer him something better.

The Others were real too. Remembering them brought a coldness quite separate from the ache in his head. Bloodraven might know how to fight them; Jon would need to discover what the old man knew. But wanting the dead stopped did not oblige him to surrender everything that would follow. He had a life to build here. He meant to survive the winter and live it.

His wife’s sleeve had brushed his arm. Even now he could almost feel it.

He had never agreed to come to Westeros. Death had put him in this bed with a child’s hands and the memories of a man who had already grown old. He could do nothing about that, but he would decide what became of him from here.

The Jon Snow he had read about had tried to save people and ended with his own men’s knives in him. Jon lay still, listening to Arthur breathe. He would remember the mistakes as well as the courage. He intended to live long enough to accomplish what the boy had been prevented from doing, and he wanted more besides.

He would be king.

He knew enough history to understand how little a crown could command when its wearer had to beg another man for soldiers. His men would draw their pay from him. When he changed a law, a great lord’s displeasure would not decide whether it held beyond the next river. Dragonstone would give him somewhere to begin building that power, and he meant to use it.

They would call some of what he wanted impossible. Others would understand it well enough to resist. He would give them reason to accept the changes; where that failed, he would make them submit. He had no intention of bargaining away his future each time one of the great houses found a different advantage. If he had to drag this world towards the life he meant to make in it, he would.

Arthur shifted beside him. Jon loosened his grip upon the knight’s wrist, ashamed to find the marks of his fingers there. Arthur looked down at him and stayed.

* * *

By Jon’s fourth nameday Luwin had begun giving him letters beside the counting beans. At first he used names the boy heard every day. Jon learned the shapes upon his own strip of parchment while Robb pressed beans into a row and gave each the name of a horse.

The maester covered the strip with his hand. “Again tomorrow.”

“You can turn it round,” Jon said.

Luwin looked at him. “Why?”

“You want to know whether I remember where it was.”

The maester drew a clean scrap towards him. He wrote the same letters in another order and asked Jon to sound them. Jon did so slowly. He knew what the lesson was for, but the Common Tongue’s spelling was not the spelling he had learned as a child. The unfamiliar arrangement cost him one sound. He asked for it, repeated it, and read the little word again.

Luwin put his quill down. “Has someone been teaching you when you leave me?”

“I ask when I see a word.”

“Whom do you ask?”

“Whoever can read it.” Jon pushed the scrap back. “That one is new.”

It was an answer Luwin could test, and a true one. Jon had no wish to sit pretending that each lesson took a week, nor to explain why he already knew how learning worked.

Robb leaned across the beans. “Write horse.”

Luwin wrote it. Jon left the sound for Robb to find. When his brother lost patience at the middle, Jon uncovered that part with one finger.

“You say it,” Robb demanded.

“Try that much.”

Robb tried, got it wrong and looked at Luwin. The maester gave him the sound again. Jon kept the rest covered until his brother had joined it to the beginning, then moved his finger.

“There,” he said when Robb reached the end.

He had nearly put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. He remembered sitting beside his daughter over a page she had decided was too hard, resisting the temptation to read it for her so they could both be finished. Robb only wanted the word for his horse. He seized the scrap, pleased with himself, and began telling Luwin what ought to be written next.

Catelyn came to fetch them with Sansa in her arms. Luwin gave Jon another arrangement of letters. He read it, then asked why different shapes could make the same sound.

“A question for many maesters.”

“Do they agree?”

“Seldom.” Luwin smiled, drawing a separate sheet close to record what Jon had read.

Catelyn called Robb to wash. He gathered his counting beans. “Jon has finished already.”

“Finish your own work. Do not race after him.” She waited for him to tie the sack, then turned to Luwin. “I do not want him hurried because another child answers first.”

“I will give them what each needs.”

Jon held out the scrap Robb had asked for. Catelyn took her son’s hand, leaving Jon to place it upon the stool. She thanked the maester and went. Arthur, waiting beyond the door, stepped back so her skirts could pass.

Jon watched the scrap. He knew why she disliked him. It did not make every small exclusion painless, but he had no intention of spending his childhood petitioning her to change her mind. He took another piece of parchment and asked Luwin for the names of the tools in the smithy.

Outside, a servant carrying lamp oil paused beside the red-bearded guard. “Is it true the little black-haired one reads the maester’s books?”

“He asked me to read a word yesterday. I could not.”

“Making sport of you?”

“No. He waited till I had finished trying, then told me not to trouble myself.” The guard glanced towards the doorway. “I found myself explaining why I had never learnt.”

“He is four.”

“I know.”

“Lower your voices,” Arthur said. “He is here.”

Jon kept his eyes upon his parchment. The man had coloured when he could not read it. Offering to teach him, with his fellows listening, would have made it worse. Jon had asked Luwin instead.

Luwin gave Jon the tool names, then leave to read the book of painted beasts while he put away his herbs. Its green spine was beyond Jon’s reach.

“Would you lift that down?” he asked the guard. “Maester Luwin said I might have it.”

Luwin nodded. The man propped his spear by the door and carried the book to the window, its wooden covers wider than Jon’s chest. Jon climbed onto the stool and pushed back his white lock.

“Call when you have done. Do not try to put it back.”

“I will. Thank you.” Jon laid his parchment clear of the heavy cover. He thanked the servant trimming the wick too. The man moved the lamp clear of Jon’s shadow and paused over the painted horse before taking his jug away.

* * *

Catelyn found Septa Mordane in the nursery, mending a gown Sansa had outgrown. Robb went straight to Nan with the word he had learned, eager to have it written again. Catelyn gave his sister to the septa and unfastened her cloak.

“Luwin means to give them different work. Robb has begun counting everything Jon finishes before him.”

“He ought not to trouble himself over that, my lady.”

“He is a child. He wants to do what his brother does.”

Mordane settled Sansa upon her knee. “Bastards grow quicker.”

Catelyn glanced at her. Beside the hearth, the linen woman slowed her folding.

“Luwin says he has never taught a child who learns so readily.”

“Quickness is not always a grace. The Seven did not bless the bed that brought him into the world. Such children need humility taught to them, not a household praising every word.”

Catelyn drew off her gloves. Ned would have called the boy innocent. He always did when she spoke of the hurt his presence caused her, as though the one answered the other.

“He is well mannered.”

“He knows whom to please. Even the women who were afraid of him bring him sweetmeats now.”

“Would you rather he were insolent?”

“I would rather they remembered whose son will rule here.” Mordane caught Sansa’s hand before she could pull at the thread. “Your son should not grow up hearing that a bastard does everything better.”

Robb was asking Nan to draw the horse beside his word. His first attempt had six legs; she was helping him decide which two to rub away.

“No,” Catelyn murmured. “He should not.”

Catelyn called the linen woman over and told her there were to be no comparisons between the boys. Mordane added a warning about encouraging pride. Catelyn let her finish.

Wylla returned with Jon after the woman had gone back to her folding. He waited while she moved a sheet from his stool.

“Thank you. Have the guests gone?”

“Not all, my lord.” The woman glanced towards Mordane.

Jon moved nearer to watch her fold, but she gathered the linen and took it towards the door. There she stopped for the little gown Mordane held out to her.

Catelyn turned to Robb’s drawing. Jon climbed onto the stool beside him and held the parchment while his brother rubbed away a crooked line.

* * *

That evening Eddard found Luwin’s separate sheet beside the lamp: the words Jon knew and three questions he had asked. Arthur stood by the hearth.

“For part of their lessons,” Luwin said when Eddard asked about separate work. “Jon is ready for harder books. I shall keep them together where I can.”

“Wylla found the linen woman avoiding him,” Arthur said. “Only days ago she was making a fuss of him.”

“She asked me whether a child could be sly without knowing it,” Luwin said. “She could name nothing he had done. Mordane had warned her against encouraging him, with Lady Catelyn there. When I asked the septa, she spoke of humility and his birth.”

Eddard drew up a chair and waited for the rookery boy to carry his bucket outside. “I will speak to my lady. Poole can deal with the talk belowstairs.”

“Let them bring me their questions,” Luwin said. “They expect to coax a child of four, not find him waiting for an explanation.”

“They need not gather outside your door to ask. Keep the lessons here. Give him work that interests him, without waiting for Robb, and stop when he is tired.”

Luwin nodded. “I shall keep a record.”

The maester gathered the scraps and went up to the rookery. Arthur waited until his steps had faded before closing the door.

“I cannot even tell them whose son they are speaking of.”

“You agreed to that silence.”

“For his life. Not so he could be taught to expect less respect than every trueborn child who visits.”

“He has a lordship to learn to rule. He will have the teaching.” Eddard looked towards the nursery passage. Wylla had carried Jon upstairs with charcoal still in his fist. “He does not have to astonish us every morning to keep his place here.”

Arthur was quiet. At last he nodded.

“And he may hear petitions?”

“Those I judge fit for him.”

On the following morning Luwin put a new page beside Jon’s bowl. Arthur kept it folded until he had eaten.

* * *

Arthur waited until Luwin had gone to the rookery before drawing a chair beside Jon’s.

“Has something happened with the women in the nursery?”

Jon finished the word he was copying. The last letter had crowded against the edge of the scrap.

“The woman who brings the linen?”

“Wylla thought she had upset you.”

Jon laid down the quill. “She used to stay and talk. Yesterday she looked to the septa before answering a question.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“No. She was quite willing to speak to Mordane when I moved away.”

Arthur had drawn the chair close, but sat forward upon it, one hand braced against his knee. Jon turned towards him.

“I was annoyed. I did not mean to bring you into it.”

“Your father knows.”

“I thought he would by now.”

“He will speak to them.”

The linen woman had been laughing a few days earlier while she rescued his stocking from Robb. Jon doubted she had taken a sudden dislike to him. He had seen men grow careful in a superior’s presence often enough to recognise the same caution here. The difference was that no one expected him to notice it from a nursery stool.

He remembered that household from the books: the affection Jon Snow had received from his father and siblings, and the small exclusions that made him question his place among them. That boy had grown up beside Robb, wanting much the same things, with no other life against which to measure what Winterfell denied him. Jon did not despise him for being hurt by it.

But he could still remember his own son coming to him for advice, a granddaughter falling asleep against his shoulder, his wife disagreeing with him across their kitchen table. He had lived too much of a life to discover his nature in a servant’s wary glance.

“You need not be so angry, Uncle.”

Arthur looked down at the hand upon his knee and loosened it.

“I came to find out whether you were.”

“I know.”

“Then do not dismiss it merely to spare me a quarrel.”

“I am not.” Jon shifted round upon the chair. “Do I seem unsure of my place here?”

“No.”

“Then believe me when I tell you it has not troubled me as much as you think.”

Arthur studied him for a moment.

“People can hurt you without being right.”

“Aye. But I would have to care rather more for her good opinion.”

“She has no right to set the women against you.”

“Nor will she have more right tomorrow. I cannot spend every day being angry because she has not changed her mind.”

From the passage came the scrape of a bucket, followed by a woman telling someone to lift his feet. Arthur waited until they had passed.

“You are entitled to better treatment.”

“I am Lord of Dragonstone,” Jon replied. “I know what I am entitled to. There is a castle waiting for me, and people Father expects me to learn to rule. I do not need Mordane to find me a place.”

“Winterfell is your home as well.”

“I have not forgotten it. I shall still eat with Robb and go to my lessons. I am not going to hide whenever she comes into the room.”

Arthur sat back at last.

“And if she interferes with those lessons?”

“Then I will speak to Father. That would be something worth settling.”

The knight nodded, though reluctantly.

Jon drew the parchment away from his elbow. “Let him speak to Lady Catelyn first. You will only quarrel if you go to her now.”

“I have no intention of quarrelling with Lady Stark.”

“You had very little to say to her at breakfast.”

“I thought silence preferable.”

“So did I yesterday.”

Arthur lowered his head with a brief, unwilling smile.

“Very well. I shall give your father time.”

Jon picked up the quill again. He was fond of the man, but there were days when being worried over proved more trying than whatever had prompted the worry.

“You will tell me when something does trouble you?”

“I will.”

The answer seemed to satisfy him more than anything else had. He rose and reached for the book when Jon began gathering the loose scraps beneath it.

“The green one goes above the histories.”

Arthur found the place and turned back for the smaller book.

“That one stays. Luwin has lent it until tomorrow.”

The knight set it beside Jon’s hand.

“Come, then. Robb is waiting.”

Jon corked the ink before climbing down. Arthur opened the door, and they went out together.

* * *

At supper Eddard asked Catelyn whether she would have more fish. She thanked him and held out her trencher. Neither spoke again until Sansa dropped her spoon.

Robb watched his mother retrieve it. He had begun telling them about Moth, but no one had asked what the pony did next. Across the table Arthur was cutting his bread into pieces smaller than he usually troubled to make.

“Have I done something?” Robb whispered.

“No.” Jon moved the gravy within his reach. “What happened to Moth’s apple?”

Robb glanced towards Eddard. “I was saving it.”

“I saw you eating it.”

“Only the bruised part.”

“And the rest?”

“He would not take it after it fell.” Robb set down his spoon to show how he had held the apple out. “Harwin said to wash it. But Moth eats off the ground.”

“Perhaps he wanted you to wash your hands.”

“I did wash them.” He spread both palms for Jon to inspect. A little dirt remained beside one nail. Jon pointed to it, and Robb hid that hand beneath the table, laughing.

Eddard asked whether the pony had received his apple in the end. Robb assured him that he had, then asked whether Eddard would watch him ride the next day. Catelyn listened while she cut Sansa’s fish. When she asked Arthur to pass the salt, he did so at once.

Jon took another piece of bread. Robb had resumed his account of the stable visit, and no one interrupted him.