Dragonstone still held for the Targaryens when Eddard's party reached Winterfell. The dead came through the gate before he did. Four grey horses drew the covered wagon beneath the portcullis. Long travel had roughened their coats and rubbed two shoulders raw beneath the harness. Salt had dried white upon the black leather. Behind them rode two silent sisters with wool veils over their faces, and behind the sisters came Lord Eddard with Howland Reed at his left hand. There should have been five more northmen.
Tales arriving ahead of the travellers had put half Eddard's companions in graves beneath the red mountains. Yet Lord Willam Dustin had turned west at the Fever River, Mark Ryswell towards the Rills, and Theo Wull towards the high valleys. Ethan Glover and Martyn Cassel had taken the east road for White Harbor carrying Eddard's letters. All five had ridden away alive. Lady Catelyn knew because ravens had preceded the wagon, each bearing a different hand and news that contradicted the singers.
No trumpet welcomed those who remained. The gate guard saw the direwolf upon the first rider's cloak and sent a boy running. Stablemen removed their caps. Two kitchen maids stopped in the yard with flour white upon their forearms. Farlen called his hounds away from the covered wagon. Catelyn waited on the inner stair with Robb against her breast, her auburn hair braided carefully beneath a blue veil. One hand supported him while the other smoothed his swaddling each time the wagon jolted nearer. Her son had slept through the first clatter of hooves. Now he woke, red and indignant, and closed one fist upon the silver trout at her throat.
"Gently," she murmured, freeing the chain. "Leave your mother her throat."
Her husband dismounted beside the wagon. The young stranger she had married at Riverrun had been uneasy taking his dead brother's place as her husband. This man's ragged beard lengthened a face drawn thin by the road; beneath his brown hair, his grey eyes looked older. Dust lay over the mud on his boots, and one shoulder sagged. He looked first at Robb.
"Is he well? Your letter said only that the birth had gone safely," Eddard asked. It was not the greeting Catelyn had imagined through five months of waiting. It was better for being plain.
"He is hungry whenever I am not feeding him, wakeful whenever I wish to sleep, and determined to pull every clasp from every cloak in Winterfell. Maester Luwin calls him very well."
"May I hold him?" Eddard asked.
She descended and placed Robb in his arms. Eddard held the child too carefully at first, one broad hand beneath the swaddled body, the other cupped at the neck. Robb studied the dark beard with blue eyes as clear as his mother's, reached, and seized as much of it as both small fists could hold. Eddard bent to kiss him, and soft auburn hair brushed his chin.
"He has a strong grip," Eddard said, trying to free his beard.
"He has been practising upon my hair since his hands learned to close," Catelyn said.
"I see I have come home too late to escape it."
Robb pulled harder. Eddard laughed, briefly and with surprise. Several people in the yard looked up at it. The rear horse shifted. Arthur Dayne rode beside it, travel-stained mail dull beneath a blue-grey cloak. Dawn crossed his back in a pale leather sheath. The songs called him the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. He looked less like a song just then than a man who had slept too many nights sitting upright. He carried a second child.
The babe was wrapped in charcoal wool. A little dark hair showed above the fold, with two pale strands fine as spun silver at the left temple. Beside Arthur rode a brown-haired woman upon a placid bay mare, one hand held ready whenever the knight's horse picked its way over a rut. Catelyn had known the babe was coming. Eddard's letter had been short enough to lodge whole in her memory.
I have acknowledged a son born to Lady Ashara Dayne during the war. He is called Jon. He comes north in my keeping. Remember, if you can, that he chose none of this. Robert Baratheon's grant had arrived two days later, fat with yellow wax and royal generosity. Before Catelyn knew whether the boy could keep down milk, she knew that he possessed Dragonstone. A groom helped the woman down from her mare. She was waiting with her arms out when Arthur dismounted with the sleeping child.
"Mind his neck, ser. The road has made you believe every jolt is ordinary," Wylla warned.
"I have him," Arthur answered.
"You are minding your sword, the horse, the wagon, every roofline in the yard and perhaps the clouds. Give him here."
Arthur obeyed. He kept one hand beneath the small head until Wylla had the child settled. Catelyn had prepared herself for the famous knight's pride; this care for Ashara's son troubled her more. Eddard eased one fist from his beard and nodded towards the woman. "Mistress Wylla, my lady. She nursed Jon at Starfall and upon the road."
Wylla bent one knee as far as the infant allowed. Her riding skirt was spattered brown to the thigh, and wind had reddened both cheeks. "Lady Stark."
The child woke. His eyes opened only a little, blue-dark beneath thick lashes. Ashara Dayne's eyes had been purple, the singers said. In this light the babe's might have been grey, violet, or merely the uncertain colour all infants carried before the world chose for them. Men began lifting Lyanna's coffin from the wagon. The small warmth in Eddard's face went out. He returned Robb to Catelyn and turned towards the bearers.
"Ned," she said. "You can eat and wash the road from yourself before we take her below."
"No. Forgive me, but I have kept Lyanna from home through every mile from Dorne. I cannot put her off another hour," he said.
The first word had been sharper than he intended. He looked back at her, the apology remaining in his face. Catelyn looked at the grey wool stretched over the coffin. Rosemary, pine tar and the sweet rot of the long road mingled beneath the cold stone smell of the yard.
"Then do not," she said. "I will come with you."
* * *
No stone likeness waited for Lyanna in the crypt. Three masons had prepared a low bed of grey granite beside Brandon's tomb. A plain lid leaned against the passage wall, uncarved save for the Stark name cut along its edge. The block meant for her image still stood in the masons' shed above. Eddard had sent measurements, but Benjen had refused to let a stranger guess his sister's face before her body came home.
"You need not stay when we open it, Ben," Eddard said.
Benjen held the torch. He had grown leaner since Catelyn last saw him. Torchlight hollowed the long Stark face; for all his height, the rawness about his blue-grey eyes made him look painfully young. "She is my sister."
Eddard stepped aside to let him come nearer.
Benjen held the torch higher. "Show me."
The silent sisters looked to Eddard. He nodded, and they drew back the outer cloth.
Salt and oil darkened Lyanna's skin. Her brown hair lay braided over one shoulder, and a dried winter rose rested beside her cheek, blue faded nearly to ash. Eddard reached beneath the wrappings and touched two fingers to the end of the braid.
"Who put the flower there?" Benjen asked.
Arthur stood beyond the ring of torchlight, bareheaded and without Dawn. He had surrendered the sword to Ser Rodrik Cassel, Winterfell's master-at-arms, at the stair. "I did."
Benjen turned. For a moment Catelyn feared he might fling the torch at him. "You put a winter rose beside her after keeping her from us for a year?" Benjen asked.
"It was among her things."
"Her things." Benjen's voice broke upon the second word. "You had her things. You had her."
Arthur did not answer. Any defence of his dead prince would have been tinder in that place. Eddard stepped between them without seeming to. "Help me lay her down, Ben."
The brothers took the head of the inner bier. Howland and Rodrik took the feet, the master-at-arms bowing his head until his grey whiskers brushed his collar. They lowered Lyanna into the waiting stone while the sisters murmured their prayers. Benjen took the faded rose before the masons brought the plain lid down. When the others withdrew, Eddard set an iron sword across the grey stone. Maester Luwin waited beside Catelyn, his grey eyes lowered. Benjen remained long enough to lay the rose beneath its hilt. He went up without looking at Arthur.
"Maester," Eddard said, "leave us. Ser Arthur, wait beyond the gate."
Catelyn heard the latch fall after them. The torch spat. Along the dark passage, the old kings sat with stone wolves at their feet and iron across their knees. Lyanna had no carved likeness among them.
"You wrote me four lines," Catelyn said. "One gave me a dead woman's name. One asked mercy for her child. I have given the child a bed. Now you will give me more."
Eddard stared at his sister's uncarved lid. "What would you know?"
"Did Ashara Dayne bear him?"
"Aye." Eddard kept his eyes on the stone.
"Did you love her?"
He shut his eyes for one breath. "Ashara is dead. I will not speak of what passed between us."
"You brought her son home to me. You owe me an answer."
"It is the answer I am able to give."
"Then give it whole. Your letter says you acknowledged the boy. It does not say Ashara placed him in your arms."
Eddard looked at Catelyn then. She had been raised among petitions and bargains; Lord Hoster never taught his daughters to miss the empty space in a man's account. "Ashara died before I reached Starfall," he said. "Her household kept the boy with Wylla. Lord Ulrick told me Ashara had spoken of her brother guarding her child if she could not. Arthur claimed the same duty. I acknowledged Jon before Lord Ulrick and brought him north."
"And you are his father?"
"I am."
"Was there any marriage? Any promise she might have called one?"
"No. Jon has no claim before Robb."
"Yet he has a king's castle, and the Sword of the Morning sleeps across from his cradle."
"Robert gave him Dragonstone in anger."
"Anger does not make the island less real. Robb has Winterfell because you say he does. Men have killed lawful sons when a bastard offered them less than a black castle and a famous sword."
"Jon will never take Robb's place."
"You know that. I know what you tell me. What will men upon Dragonstone know when the boys are grown?"
"The grant excludes him from Winterfell. Robert agreed to that before I accepted."
"Send Jon to Starfall. Let his mother's kin rear him."
"No. I will not send a nursing babe away because his presence wounds us," Eddard said. The answer came from father and lord together. It was the first thing Eddard had said without choosing each word.
"Why here, Ned? Starfall could keep him."
"Because I mean to raise him."
"Then you have decided, and all that remains is to tell me what I must endure."
Eddard looked at her at last. The grief in his face did not excuse him. Catelyn waited for an apology; when none came, she took her hand from Lyanna's stone.
"Do not ask me to love him."
"I will not."
"Do not ask Robb to yield because your guilt has made the other boy precious."
Pain crossed his face. "I will ask no such thing."
"What am I to tell Robb when he asks why his brother's mother is not his own?"
"That I wronged you, and Jon had no part in it."
It was the first answer that cost him something she could see. Catelyn folded her hands, one over the other, until the trembling stopped.
"I will not strike at a babe because his father injured me. Do not call that forgiveness."
"I would not."
"Come upstairs, then." Catelyn turned towards the stair. "You have scarcely seen Robb."
Beyond the iron gate Arthur stood with his back against the wall, Dawn once more at his side; Rodrik had returned it at the foot of the stair. He looked at Eddard, then at Catelyn. Whatever question he had, he swallowed it when she passed.
* * *
Howland Reed meant to leave at dawn. Eddard found him beneath the heart tree tying an oilskin bundle into a narrow ironwood coffer. Wet red leaves clung to the lid. The crannogman's marsh horse cropped moss near the pool, too small and ill-tempered to interest any thief who valued his fingers. Arthur waited beside the white trunk. The little iron key lay in his palm.
"You could rest another day," Eddard said.
"My wife has waited long enough." Howland pressed the lid down. "I would rather rest at home."
Eddard glanced at the coffer. "Will it stay dry?"
"Greywater has dry places. We do not mark them for visitors."
Inside lay the papers recording Rhaegar's marriage to Lyanna and Lord Ulrick's attested copy of the altered Starfall household entry. What they proved, taken together, could hang three men or crown one child. Howland closed the lock. Arthur kept the key. Eddard kept the names of living witnesses and the promise that bound them.
"Willam is home," Eddard said. "Barbrey threatens to break his legs if he mounts before the moon turns."
Howland smiled. "She will keep him truer than any oath."
"Word from the other four as well. All know where the others have gone. None wrote more than that."
Arthur's fingers closed around the key as the coffer vanished beneath Howland's cloak. "If you have need of me—"
"I know where to find you," Howland said. Arthur turned towards the keep, listening.
An infant had begun to cry. "That one is Jon," Arthur said. "Robb breaks higher when he is hungry."
"And I have been looking for you both." Wylla came down the covered walk with Jon at her shoulder. She handed him to Eddard while she unfastened her gown beneath her mantle. Jon rooted against the unyielding doublet; Arthur steadied his head when Eddard bounced him too sharply.
Wylla settled beneath the walk and took him back. The crying ceased. While he fed, Eddard checked Howland's girth. Arthur shortened the rear strap a hole, muttering that crannogmen rode saddles fit for sacks of onions.
"Onions complain less," Howland said. "When he is old enough to ask, tell him his mother laughed loudly, rode badly when angry, and wanted him to live. When it is safe to tell him about her, let him know that much."
Eddard rested one hand on the horse's neck. "Ride carefully through the marsh road and send one word when Greywater has you."
"You will hear from me," Howland said.
Howland passed beneath the gate without banner or escort. The coffer looked too mean to carry a dead prince's marriage, a child's birth and words that might begin another war. He vanished among wet pines before the sun climbed over the wall.
Arthur stood at the gate until Howland was gone. Eddard waited beside him. Behind them Wylla hummed to the feeding child, an old Dornish tune neither man knew well enough to join.
* * *
Robb's oak cradle, brought from Riverrun, occupied the nursery's warm wall, painted trout swimming through a blue wash above its lavender-scented mattress. Jon's pine one still smelled of sap. Arthur set it down away from the loose shutter, and Wylla folded leather beneath its short leg. At the hearth Old Nan, who had nursed Starks long before Catelyn came to Winterfell, tested the bathwater with a wrinkled hand.
"I shall send the steward," Catelyn told them. "Poole can find you a carpenter."
Arthur bowed. Wylla gave her a brief smile and lowered Jon into the bath. He began to shriek. Robb, waiting his turn, joined him.
"Brothers in misery." Old Nan shook her head over the noise.
Catelyn felt Arthur look towards her. She did not correct the word. She would not bless it yet either.
Later Rodrik brought the guard roster to Eddard in the nursery. "Am I to put Ser Arthur down for a watch?"
"I keep watch upon my nephew." Arthur moved Dawn clear of the wash basin.
"And there may be times we need every man in the yard."
Eddard eased linen from Robb's mouth. "Ser Arthur is Jon's uncle and sworn shield by my leave. Here he answers to my law and your command in the yard. Who stays with Jon if he is called away?"
"I will leave a man." Rodrik passed the roster to his nephew Jory, Martyn's son and one of the household guards. "Tell the serjeant where you are going, ser."
Arthur nodded. Jory had been trying to keep a straight face while Robb fought for the linen; he turned quickly towards the door when the babe won it back.
That evening Eddard came to the nursery smelling of rain and horse. He had heard petitions since noon and eaten nothing but a heel of rye bread. Robb slept already. Jon did not. Wylla let Eddard take him and sat down to her own porridge at last.
Eddard hummed a northern cradle song. Jon stopped crying, listened, and began again.
"Try something Dornish," Arthur suggested from the door.
"I know none. You will have to sing it."
The easy words surprised both men. Arthur came in and warmed his hands at the brazier while Eddard walked Jon between the two cradles. Eddard could remember Lyanna insisting that he learn the second verse. He had complained then that she knew it well enough for them both.
When Jon finally slept, Eddard laid him in the plain pine cradle. Before leaving, he covered the small fist with his hand until it opened.
* * *
Later that season Dragonstone surrendered during three days of hard rain. The raven reached Winterfell soaked and vicious. Stannis had crossed from the mainland; the gates opened without sack or fire. Rhaella was dead, her children gone before the royal fleet arrived. Eddard read the message twice over cold supper. Robb crushed peas with a wooden spoon while Jon watched.
"You are relieved that the royal children escaped before Stannis took the castle," Catelyn observed.
Eddard folded the raven sheet. "That Stannis found no children to kill? Aye."
"Robert would not order babes killed after what the Lannisters laid before him," Catelyn began.
"He accepted Tywin's gift after seeing what lay beneath those cloaks. I no longer say what Robert would not do."
Arthur stopped cutting his goose. He said nothing, which was worse than agreement. Luwin laid another letter beside Eddard's hand. It bore the mailed-fist seal of Ethan Glover, sent from White Harbor three days earlier.
"Ethan waited at White Harbor as you ordered," Luwin said. "Martyn is riding home."
"Why send him before the castle fell?" Catelyn asked.
"If Rhaella held, he was a wounded man resting near a port. If she yielded, he could sail before a court favourite claimed Jon's island."
Arthur tore his bread. "Six northmen cannot hold it against Rhaella's garrison."
"Nor sixty if the island hates them. You agreed to keep Robert's peace and serve Jon; some of her men may do the same." Eddard drew towards him the clean board Catelyn offered. "Ethan is to take the keys, count the stores and name the men at the gates and armoury. Men who swear stay. The rest may depart with their goods. Men will answer for theft and murder, not for having served the losing king."
"Question the gate captains apart," Arthur said. "A man who took Stannis's money may sell his gate again."
"I will tell him. Then he must judge them; he is there and we are not." Arthur nodded.
Catelyn dipped bread into the cooling stew. "Those men are owed wages, Ned. Ethan will need coin to pay them, and grain for the stores."
Arthur glanced at her. "You would spend Winterfell's grain upon Dragonstone?"
"I would sell northern grain where the king's silver can buy it. Jon's island pays a fair price, White Harbor takes its due, and the stores do not rot."
"Luwin, put that in the letter," Eddard said. Catelyn took another piece of bread, satisfied to have settled one part of the matter. Robb abandoned the peas and held out a grease-shining hand for goose skin. Jon leaned across Eddard's arm towards the quill.
"Not the point," Eddard said, moving the ink and turning the feather. He laid the clean end across Jon's palm. Jon gripped it and watched Luwin copy the order, his gaze following each journey from inkpot to parchment.
"He wants the quill," Catelyn said.
"He wants whatever the rest of us are using," Eddard replied, though he waited for Jon to release the feather before taking it back.
Ethan sailed four days later. His first full account arrived two moons after he left, with a chip of black basalt wrapped inside. Eddard had the household eat early to hear it before the children slept. Robb refused the onions in brown gravy until Jon took one from his trencher; then he ate, watching whether Jon did the same. Smoked trout, cheese and black bread followed, with honeyed baked apples.
"Begin with the men who yielded the gates," Arthur said.
"Does he say how he fares?" Wylla asked.
"Well," Luwin read. "His roof leaks, but he has found a dry corner for the accounts."
"He would save those first," Eddard said.
Stannis's captain had handed over the keys, leaving most of Rhaella's garrison. The queen had been found dressed in black with her dragon brooch at her throat. Stannis had ordered a Targaryen pyre and sealed her ashes in stone. The ruby dragon remained among the castle goods; he had taken neither jewel nor ships.
Keeping the ships would consume the money Ethan needed for grain. Of ten listed warships, only six still floated, and he could not afford to send two crews to sea. The others had been hauled ashore or stripped of oars and cordage.
He had paid half the garrison's arrears and heard the men by company, checking names against pay rolls and village complaints. Twenty-three had returned their issued arms and left, their unpaid wages entered in the book. Thieves and men who refused the oath were removed. Three hundred remained. Eight captains and serjeants swore first, the companies following once paid and promised no punishment for an old banner. They swore to Jon into Ethan's hands under Eddard's sealed authority, to renew the oath before their lord when he came.
"Half their arrears." Arthur put down his knife. "We shall see whether the oaths hold once it is spent."
Stolen royal silver had returned to the treasury. A clerk had claimed payment for sound barley while the sacks held mould and mouse nests. Ethan put him in a dry cell to await the witnesses and gave his chamber to a widow whose daughter had died when lightning fired the lower stable. The cook stayed after exposing bins counted twice. So did Tobin, the quay foreman, who had saved roof timber from soldiers short of firewood.
"Tobin wants that timber for a mast," Luwin continued. "Denys, the shipmaster, says it will twist before it cures. Ethan means to keep the soundest galley at sea and offer the other crew shore pay until their ship can be fitted out."
"Will they take it?" Catelyn asked.
"He does not yet know."
Eddard turned the basalt chip beneath his thumb. If they refused, Ethan would lose sailors Jon could not readily replace. If he paid them in full, he would have to take the coin from something else.
"Send grain and slate," he decided. "Ask what he needs to keep those men. And have Denys choose the hull; neither Ethan nor I can judge a ship from its accounts."
Luwin noted the answer beside the letter. Eddard laid the basalt chip beside it.
Jon leaned over Eddard's arm towards the basalt. Arthur caught the stone first. "Sharp edge. Here, wait."
Jon's gaze followed the stone rather than the carved horse Robb pushed against his knee. When Arthur moved the chip, Jon reached after it again. Arthur wrapped the basalt in two folds of linen and laid its broad face against Jon's palm, keeping the broken edge within his own grip. Jon ceased struggling. His thumb moved over the pitted stone while Luwin finished the letter.
Robb laid the horse across Jon's legs and kept one hand upon it, unwilling to surrender the gift merely because the black stone had won his brother's notice.
"Robb will want the stone in a moment," Arthur said quietly.
"Let him look," Eddard said.
He put one hand over both small hands, keeping the linen around the sharp edge while Robb leaned closer.
* * *
By the time the boys could cross the nursery holding to furniture, Nan had taught them to hunt for a wooden horse beneath three little boxes. Robb liked lifting all three. Jon watched the hand that hid it. When Nan tried keeping the horse behind her back, he pointed to her elbow.
"He watches you," a maid remarked, pausing with fresh rushes. She bent towards Jon in the bright, coaxing manner she used with Robb, then faltered when he waited for her to finish.
Catelyn entered with nursery linen. She listened while Eddard told her about the horse, gave the boxes a brief glance and gathered the loose lids from beneath Robb's feet. When he had finished, she lifted her son for supper.
Jon went to Wylla instead. His stocking had worked round beneath his heel, and he held up the offending foot until she put aside her sewing to straighten it. Eddard took him when she had done. He was asleep against his shoulder before they reached the hall.
* * *
Before the boys were two, Robb discovered that striking the side of his cup made the milk jump. He tried it twice at supper, laughing, and on the third blow the cup fell into his lap.
Wylla rose from the little table. Robb began to cry before she reached him. He clutched his bowl as though she meant to take that away too, pulling it towards the spreading milk.
Jon caught the rim. "Leave it."
Robb pulled harder. Jon let him have the bowl before it broke, moved the fallen cup out of the way and held out his empty hand.
"Dry clothes," he said. "Then eat."
"No." Robb hunched over his supper, wet wool sticking to his belly.
Jon knew that refusal. His grandson had once sat in a puddle of spilled water and fought everyone who tried to lift him out of it. He had wanted his place kept, his food untouched, and someone to understand that the whole unhappy business was not his fault. Jon had been able to carry him then. Now his feet scarcely found the rung beneath his stool.
He pushed his own bowl beside Robb's and patted the empty place where the cup had stood.
"Here. I wait."
Robb looked at the two bowls. When Wylla lifted him, he let her, though he kept watching over her shoulder until she had carried him behind the hanging.
The nursery maid brought a cloth. She began with the milk upon the table, but Jon pointed to the stool.
"That too."
"Aye, young lord." She wiped the seat, then stopped with the cloth in her hand and looked at him. Her glance went to the hanging where Wylla was changing Robb, as though the instruction might have come from there. Jon drew his bowl back and reached for his spoon.
Arthur came in and looked at the untouched supper and the empty stool.
"Have you quarrelled?"
"Spilled," Jon said, pointing at the damp patch.
"I see that. Why are you not eating?"
"Waiting."
The knight glanced towards the hanging. Robb was arguing about which arm belonged in which sleeve. When Arthur looked back, Jon had already moved the fresh cup away from the edge of the table.
Arthur sat down beside them rather than return to the door. Robb came back in a dry tunic, found his supper where he had left it and wanted to show him what the milk had done. Jon laid a hand over the cup before he could begin again.
"Not twice," he said.
Robb laughed at that and struck the table with his spoon instead. Jon finally took a mouthful of his own supper. It was cold, a familiar reward for seeing to a child first.