The stableman's wife came after the last lord had ridden out. Catelyn saw her waiting beneath the gallery while the guest yard emptied around her. She wore a brown cloak mended at both elbows and held a good wool cap between hands roughened by lye. A raw-boned boy stood at her shoulder. He had combed his hair with water; it was already drying into dark spikes. Behind them, a Manderly wagon groaned through the gate. Two Karstark men shouted for a missing saddlecloth. Servants carried rolled pallets from the guest range, and Robb struck a leather ball against the wall until Cley's departing voice called one final insult from beneath the arch. "You are Alasdair's mother?" Catelyn asked.
The woman dipped her head. "Mara, my lady. His father kept the stable at the Brown Tankard until Master Harclay hired him to drive his wagons south."
Alasdair bowed late and too deeply. He was twelve, perhaps, all wrist and knee, with a rope burn crossing one palm. Catelyn asked what he had learnt in the stables since taking Jon's badge. "I can saddle, curry, and mend common tack. I know most lame steps upon level ground, read short words, and reckon feed for six horses."
"Four," Mara corrected. The boy's ears reddened, but he lowered his claim.
Catelyn looked from the boy to his mother. "What brings you here, Mara?"
Mara twisted the cap once. "Work for me, my lady. The innkeeper has put his cousins in the stable while my husband is away. They say I may keep the loft if I wash for the inn, but most of the washing wage goes in rent. My son gives me what he can. He cannot keep us both."
Catelyn asked what Harclay owed. "The last moon's silver and a share of barley," Mara said. Alasdair counted the weeks since his father left. The first month had been paid on the road; nothing had come home since.
"The keeper says payment waits until the teams return," Mara added. Alasdair looked towards the gate.
A broken axle could delay the wagons for a fortnight. Mara still had to pay for her loft. Catelyn had watched her father hear enough of these quarrels at Riverrun; by the time a carter returned, the wife might have pawned everything she could spare. She sent for the man who kept Harclay's accounts. He had come below the winter town to meet the returning wagons.
While they waited, Alasdair watched the yard. Jon was speaking with Oren beside a pile of split shovel hafts, his wrapped hand tucked beneath his arm. "Lord Black means to have a house below the walls," Mara said. "There might be washing there."
"When it is built," Catelyn said. "For now his men sleep here."
Mara lowered her eyes. Catelyn gave her three days washing the bedding from the guest range at the common wage, with her bed still at the Tankard. "Poole will speak to the innkeeper. You will not lose the loft while this debt is heard. Alasdair may help Hullen clear the guest stable when Heward releases him from drill."
The boy asked whether the stable work carried pay. "For work beyond your lord's service," Catelyn said. "Hullen will keep the count. You will not miss the yard to earn another penny."
Mara made a small sound of disbelief.
The leather ball struck a gallery post, sprang past Robb, and rolled to Alasdair's boot. "Throw!" Robb called.
Alasdair sent it back in a hard, level cast. Robb caught it against his chest and laughed. "You have an arm. Come down."
Alasdair looked at Catelyn. She shook her head. "Wait here." Harclay's keeper arrived before the game ended, with two teamsters and his half of a tally stick. Catelyn received him in the lower hall. Poole sat beside her with an ink horn. Mara remained near the door, Alasdair on a low stool at her side.
"Paid through the first moon," Harclay's man said. He laid the notched stick on the table. "The first wage has been crossed off."
Poole turned the wood. "But the second is still owing."
"The wagons have not come home. We hold back part of the drivers' wages until we know what feed and harness have been lost or damaged on the road."
"Was he hired for the second moon?" Catelyn asked.
"Aye, my lady. But road damage may be owed against it."
"Bring that claim when you know it. Who witnessed the hiring?"
One teamster raised his hand. "I loaded barley beside him. Harclay promised the second moon at the east bridge."
The other had heard the same hiring and the promise of barley when they came north again.
"How much barley?" Poole asked. The men disagreed. One remembered a sack. The other remembered a half-sack for each driver and a full one for the master carter. The keeper declared that memory always grew when grain changed hands.
Catelyn turned the tally towards Poole.
"Poole, advance her the unpaid moon and half a sack of barley. Deduct it from Harclay's next carriage payment." Catelyn turned to the keeper. "Tell him to bring the reckoning when he returns. Any claim against the driver can be heard then."
The keeper bowed. Poole counted out the silver and entered it against Harclay's name.
Mara counted the coins twice. She thanked Catelyn, then Poole and each teamster who had spoken for her. The keeper gathered his tally and left. Catelyn saw the worn leather beneath Alasdair's stool and turned to Poole. "House Black's cobbler must mend those shoes."
"He will outgrow them by winter."
"Then he must leave room for the boy to grow." Mara smiled.
Later, with Heward's leave, Alasdair earned three extra coppers in the guest stable. He found a doubled saddle pad rubbing a Manderly mare's shoulder. Hullen had him leave her unsaddled, wash the pad and lay it flat to dry.
After dinner, a missing Manderly cup brought Catelyn to the guest range. An under-steward had emptied the rush baskets, laundry bundles and servants' bedding. A kitchen girl was crying; Alasdair stood with both fists shut beside Mara's basket.
"We touched no silver."
Catelyn looked at the stripped guest bed. "Has the mattress been lifted?"
The under-steward had searched only the linens. At her direction Alasdair and another stable boy raised the mattress. The cup lay beneath a folded blanket, caught between the ropes and rail.
"Put their things back," Catelyn told the steward. "Tell the women where it was."
Sansa remembered then: Wylla Manderly had hidden treasure for their wooden bear. Catelyn sent her to explain to the frightened girl and had her write to Wylla. The cup went east with the letter. Outside the stable, Alasdair put his three earned coppers into his mother's free hand; the barley was tucked beneath her other arm.
* * *
That afternoon, Arthur put Robb on his back. Wind chased straw beneath the eastern arches. Theon lounged upon the mounting rail and declared himself too old for children's drills while watching every pass. Ser Rodrik stood with folded arms. Eddard had come from the small hall and stopped beneath the gallery without announcing himself. Robb struck high with an ash sword. Arthur stepped through the reach and touched a willow wand behind his knee. Robb's legs went away. He caught himself upon one hand and rolled. "Dead," Theon said.
Robb rose. "He has a stick."
"He has had more practice," Rodrik said.
"Again."
Arthur beckoned Jon forward. Jon tucked his wrapped hand against his belt and took the ash sword in his left. He advanced before Robb could finish describing the trick.
Arthur offered the same shoulder. Jon held the centre and waited. The wand slipped beneath his blade and tapped his chest.
"Dead," Theon said. "A smaller corpse, but very lordly."
"You waited too long," Arthur told Jon. He made the movement again, slowly, showing how he shifted his foot before turning. "Watch the heel. Strike as he moves it, before he can turn away."
Jon tried it with Robb. His brother offered the same feint, and this time Jon's point caught him beneath the ribs. Robb looked down at it.
"Domeric showed you."
"He showed both of us." Jon returned the sword to Arthur.
Eddard stepped into the yard. "You have lost a pin from that bandage."
Jon looked down. The linen had worked loose at the base of his thumb. He held it out for Eddard to see.
Eddard took him towards the covered stair while Rodrik set Robb to footwork. Jon glanced at the loosened fold.
"You saw that from the gallery?"
"You have been tugging at it since I came out."
Jon tucked the loose end beneath his finger so it would not catch again. He climbed the stair beside Eddard. The riders seeking Edden returned while Wylla changed the linen. One had followed the northern road past the steaming pools; the other had searched the southern camps, where so many wagons had passed that he could no longer follow any one set of tracks. Neither had found the boy or his mother.
Robb waited for Jon outside. They went down to the gate together, where travellers were still coming in from the roads.
"Has anyone brought word of Edden?" Robb asked.
The clerk shook his head.
Jon stayed beside the gate while Robb stopped the next wagoner to ask whether he had seen a boy in a blue-patched coat. He had not.
At the family table Arya threw peas until her nurse carried her away. Bran slept through the fish course and woke crying for milk. Sansa earned stewed plums by keeping her hands clean, then tried to save the largest for Jeyne, who had been sent to eat with her father. Catelyn had a small dish fetched for it.
"She may have it tomorrow," she said. "Eat yours before it cools."
Robb had Cley's wooden ball beneath his chair. He rolled it from one foot to the other while Eddard cut through the crisp skin of a trout. With the guest benches empty, the small sounds carried farther: Sansa scraping her spoon, the click of Arthur's cup, rain beginning against the shutter. Jon could hear the great hall being swept beyond the passage.
"Cley says his father will let him come back when the hay is in," Robb said.
"His father said we would discuss it," Catelyn answered. "That is not quite the same thing."
Robb caught the ball between his heels. "Could we ask him?"
"When Lord Cerwyn writes." She moved the platter nearer Eddard without looking at Jon. "You may put a letter of your own with mine."
Jon took a piece of fish and worked the bones free against the edge of his trencher. Robb nudged the ball beneath his boot, wanting it held still while he reached for bread. After a while he began moving a crust round the edge of his bowl.
"Will the riders look again tomorrow?"
"Jory has left word at the inns," Eddard said. "They know to send here if he comes."
Eddard put down his bread. "Your lady mother found work for Alasdair's mother today. His father is with Harclay's wagons, and she has been waiting for wages."
"She will have them," Catelyn said. "Poole has the keeper's tally."
Robb looked at her. "Did she ask?"
"She came to the gallery with her son." Catelyn glanced towards Jon. "There will be more of them when word of the new house spreads. Know what you offer before you call them."
"The household will have its own roof," Jon said. "Heward wants room to drill all four files without waiting for Ser Rodrik's men to clear the yard."
Arthur leaned forward. "Give him room, then. And let him choose where the armoury door goes. He knows how the men will reach their weapons."
"He walks the ground with us," Jon said.
Wylla reached for the house drawing beside Poole's book. "Elspeth has been looking at your kitchen. You will hear about that pantry when she comes down." Elspeth was the Winterfell cook Jon hoped to hire.
Catelyn moved her wine out of the drawing's path. "She is still in my service. Morna must learn the larger ovens before I can spare her."
"Then we must give her time to teach Morna." Jon kept the drawing where both women could see it. "I will speak to you before I hire her."
Catelyn studied him, then called Robb back to his chair when he climbed onto the bench to look. Wylla left the drawing within his reach.
* * *
The next packet from Dragonstone came with a White Harbor trader: six lines in Ethan's hand and a broken chain link wrapped in sailcloth. A ship pulling at her moorings had torn the winding drum loose from its stone base. Tobin, the harbour master, had closed that berth and called Ethan down. Masons reset the base before another ship used it.
Jon turned the rust-scaled link while Eddard read the letter. "Tobin did well. He is to close any unsafe berth and tell Ethan what he needs to mend it."
Black iron showed through the break. "Have Ethan include the repair in his next account."
Luwin drew the ink nearer. "Anything else?"
"The island's old harvest accounts, and what its harbour earned. Bad years as well as good."
Jon took a quill from Luwin. It sat poorly between his bandaged fingers, so he used his left hand. The letters came large and uneven. Eddard waited until he had finished, then passed him the wax.
* * *
Twelve days after the feast, Wyman returned from Castle Cerwyn to settle the carving and bring his earnest. While Catelyn asked after Leona and the girls, Robb wanted news of Wendel's lame courser. The swelling had gone, Wendel said; Wylis maintained that the horse had merely tired of carrying him.
Wyman insisted on seeing the clock wound, despite his sons' warnings about the stair.
"They were steep before I grew fat. Give me your arm."
Pate had a chair waiting. Wyman questioned him between turns of the handle, then went to inspect the workshop. Unfinished wheels filled two racks beside the single fine bench; a bucket caught rain near the door.
"My privy at New Castle has more floor."
"We could use the space," Jon agreed.
Woods showed him the full-sized chalk outline of the merman. Wyman wanted the silver tail to curve farther out, but Wylis produced the measures from New Castle: it would not pass the stair. Wyman conceded the tail and looked back at the bench.
"When the northern lords see mine, they will all find reasons their halls require bells."
"And men who know the work," Jon said. "Olyver and I cannot finish every clock ourselves."
Wyman glanced at Olyver. "Train them well. I do not wish to be the last man who pays only six hundred."
Before supper they settled the carving in Eddard's solar. Wyman ate a slice of lamprey pie his cook had baked at Cerwyn while Osric unrolled the drawing: a silver merman around a white-and-green clock face. Poole confirmed the agreed price of six hundred dragons.
"I have brought the earnest," Wyman said. "And an offer. A dry shed beneath the Wolf's Den, if you will set your bench there."
Mikken looked up. Woods stopped turning the drawing towards the light.
"For this clock?" Jon asked.
"For this and the next. You need iron, bronze and ships. I have all three."
"I have the bench." Jon put his good hand on the edge of the drawing. "Your keeper learns to wind it and your smith learns the common repairs. The making stays with me."
Wyman chewed a mouthful of pie before answering. "You could save yourself the road."
"And put every clock I sell through your gate."
Wyman's eyes creased. He took another mouthful of pie.
"Ask me again when I need a harbour workshop," Jon said. "For now, the making stays here."
Wyman signed and set his seal beside the measure. The price did not change. After dark four Manderly guards carried the advance to Poole's room, where each coin met a scale. One clipped dragon rose light. Wendel replaced it from his purse and made the clerk name the chest it had left.
* * *
Mallon took the bell money to his foundry. While Woods built the merman's case, Mikken and his journeyman forged the wheels and axles for Jon and Olyver to fit. Robb waited through the bell's long fading note before asking to hear it again.
The assembled clock ran for fourteen days. On the ninth evening Jon found an axle support hot to the touch; Mikken filed away the rough edge rubbing against it. Jon stayed until it cooled, then Arthur brought his cloak and took him to supper. Mikken promised to call if it heated again.
When the trial was done, the bell went east upon one wagon and the mechanism upon another, cushioned in felt and wool. Robb inspected both. "When one loses a wheel, Lord Wyman receives half a clock."
Jon caught his brother peering beneath the first wagon. "Come with us. I shall lash you beneath the axle to catch it."
Eddard would not let Robb go. At the gate Robb was still blaming the merman for it, but he raised a hand when Jon looked back. Arthur rode on the first wagon's left, Jon on its right; Osric's hired horseman, Ralf, followed with spare mounts and fodder. Desmond, Harwin, Porther and Quent spread before and behind, Osric kept the purse among the carters, and Woods and Olyver tended the cases at each halt. Jon rode ahead with Arthur to examine the road, letting the wagons catch up rather than fighting Bucephalus's wish to pass them. Rain silvered the stallion's black neck and soaked Jon's gloves. At the Brown Tankard, Mara brought the mares hot mash. Alasdair ran a hand down the off animal's foreleg and stopped above the hoof.
"She is warm here."
The carter frowned. "She has not limped."
"Not yet."
Jon dismounted beside the wheel. "Lift the foot." A small stone lay wedged against the soft underside of the hoof. Ralf freed it and walked the mare. She took short, painful steps. They left her in the Tankard stable; Osric arranged a sound replacement before the carts moved on.
Mara watched Jon put one copper in Alasdair's palm. "His household pay came yesterday, my lord."
"This is for the work he did beyond it."
"Will you set him to the horses when the new stable stands?"
Jon looked at the boy, who stood listening with the copper in his open palm. "If Ralf judges him ready. He saw what the carter missed tonight."
Alasdair closed his fingers around the coin and hurried back to the mare.
Several days later, salt, tar and fish reached Jon before the pale walls of White Harbor showed through rain. Gulls wheeled above the slate roofs. The clock wagon stopped behind a fish cart, its driver hastily moving baskets at Osric's call. A fishwife pulled two children against her skirts as they ran after the painted silver merman. Jon passed at a walk beneath their eyes.
Beyond the crush, streets opened broad and straight between whitewashed walls, roof water running into stone gutters. A silversmith's shutters held cups and brooches; behind them a boy worked a bow drill. Jon kept watching the boy while casks rolled towards the water and a septon gathered his robe clear of the puddles.
Jon eased Bucephalus aside for a dray. The stallion's flank brushed Arthur's boot.
"You are looking at every shop," Arthur said.
"At the hands in them." Jon watched the drill bow move again. "Mikken has to make a farmer wait whenever I need a clock axle. Here there are men who do nothing all day but cut, bore and polish silver."
"Manderly will tell you so himself."
"He has. I can still buy their work without giving him mine."
Arthur smiled a little and moved his horse forward. A Manderly man had come to lead them through the next crossing. He wore a sea-green cloak fastened with a silver trident, and the traffic parted when he called. Above the nearer roofs Jon could see the New Castle on its hill and, lower down, the smoke from the furnaces they had come to visit.
Mallon's foundry stood below the Wolf's Den, black around its high vents. Three men worked the furnace. Two boys carried charcoal in shallow baskets. A girl not much older than Olyver scraped mould clay from small castings at a low bench. Mallon left the casting he had been examining and came to meet Jon.
Mallon called a charcoal boy over. "This lad heard a mould crack before I did, my lord."
The boy lowered his eyes. Jon asked his age and how long he had worked at the furnace. He was old enough to begin learning the casting.
"Put him on my next bell," Jon told Mallon. "I will pay his apprentice's wage while he learns."
Mallon bowed. At New Castle, Woods and the local carpenters were preparing the frame. Two days passed in raising it, fitting the movement and hanging the bell. The first trial sounded before the merman's silver tail had been fixed to the case. Wyman came in his chair to listen. When his granddaughter Wylla slipped towards the open work door, Lady Leona caught her hand.
"A kitten could fit through that door," the girl said.
"No kittens near the weights," Jon told her.
"Then why make a kitten door?"
"For the keeper's hand, not the keeper," Jon said, pointing to the small access hatch. Wyman asked the women to stand beside his chair while the test began. The first stroke set a kitchen dog barking. The second brought servants to the passage ends. By the sixth, Wylla counted aloud. At the ninth, Wyman ceased pretending to watch only for faults.
That evening Jon changed out of his work coat and joined Arthur at the doors of the Merman's Court. Voices and lamplight spilled into the passage.
He stopped just inside. Painted fish swam between the windows, and the rafters rose above a sea of green and blue. Beneath his boots a crab seemed to crawl out of a tangle of dark weed. Wylla Manderly came to tell him which creatures she liked best and pointed towards a shark higher up the wall. Her elder sister caught her hand before she could drag him across the path of the serving men.
"Grandfather is waiting," Wynafryd said.
Wyman had given Jon a place near his own, with Arthur beside Wendel. Men who had visited the clock that afternoon rose when Jon reached the dais. Their manners were polished, their coats richer than most he had seen in Winter Town. A shipowner bowed over a ringed hand and asked whether a smaller clock could be made for his own hall. Another wanted a painted face in the colours of his wife's family.
"Give Osric the measurements," Jon told them. "He will write to you when we can begin."
The shipowner glanced towards Wyman. "Lord Manderly has made it difficult to entertain him without one."
"I remain capable of eating in a silent hall," Wyman assured him. He settled a cloth beneath his beard while the first platter came. "Provided the cooking is good."
There were mussels in their shells, a white fish dressed with parsley, warm bread and little dishes of salted butter. Wendel prised a stubborn shell apart and narrowly saved his sleeve from the broth. Conversation passed from the clock to ships overdue from the Sisters and a cargo of wine whose owner insisted that some other man's casks had been loaded first. Jon listened while he ate. These men knew the cost of an idle quay down to the day, and Wyman knew which of them was concealing his profit.
When the wine came, Wynafryd asked after Sansa. Jon told her about the recovered cup and her grandfather demanded to hear the whole tale. Wylla hid her face against her sister's shoulder. She emerged only to insist that the wooden bear had needed treasure. Wendel asked whether the bear had paid for it; Lady Leona told him to stop helping. For several minutes the clock was forgotten.
During the week of trials at New Castle, Jon watched Tobren, the new keeper, wind the clock each dawn. The covered bearings stayed clean in the damp air.
One morning, once Tobren had finished, Jon rode down to the harbor with Wendel and Arthur. The morning tide was lifting a deep-bellied merchantman against her moorings. Bare-legged men moved sacks along a gangplank while a mate shouted the count from the rail. Across the water a shipwright's mallet kept a slower beat, driving caulking into a hull propped above the mud.
Wendel pointed out the fishing boats and the berths used by the larger traders. Jon asked which quay could take a laden ship at low water. When Wendel did not know, he called the harbor man over and let him answer. Jon dismounted to look along the face of the stonework; Arthur stayed close while he knelt above the wet steps and judged the drop to the water.
"Are you buying a quay as well?" Wendel asked.
"I want to see how this one was built. Ethan has repairs to make on Dragonstone."
He stood and brushed grit from his knees. Beyond the moored hulls, the open water was grey under the morning sky. He had missed its smell more than he knew. For a little while he watched the men aboard the merchantman, following an order from the mate's mouth to the hands that obeyed it, and thought of a deck that would be his to command again.
Wendel waited until he turned back. On the climb to New Castle they bought hot fish wrapped in coarse bread, and Jon ate his from the saddle while Arthur kept the stallion at a walk. Wendel was halfway through a second piece before the gate came into view.
On the seventh morning Tobren worked without prompting. When the eighth noon struck clean, Wyman paid the balance.
"Six hundred for all that. Do you regret the price yet?"
"Perhaps I should have asked for more."
"Too late." Wyman watched Jon return the key to Tobren. "Tell Luwin I should be glad to hear how he has taught you. My granddaughters have not yet put my bellman out of work."
"Pate still has work, my lord. So does your keeper."
Wyman laughed and called for his letters to Eddard. Arthur fastened Jon's travelling cloak; three jars of lamprey went north with them.
* * *
Back in Winterfell, Poole settled the costs of making and delivering the clock and repaid the money Winterfell had lent House Black. Two hundred and ninety-four dragons remained on the table. Robb stared at the gold. "You could buy fifty suits of armour."
"Plain ones," Mikken said. "Forty if blackened. Thirty if you put wolves upon every buckle."
"No wolves," Jon said.
Mikken grinned. Jon left enough with Poole for the next promised work and locked the rest in the iron-bound chest.
Arthur waited until Robb had gone before drawing Woods's plan towards him. He chose the room beside the stair, then looked across at Jon.
"Tell Ned tomorrow. In private."
Jon laid his hand over the chamber marked for him. "Will you come?"
"Aye."
* * *
Eddard heard them the next morning in the small solar. Woods's plan lay between them. Arthur stood by the hearth while Jon sat opposite his father, his boots not quite reaching the floor.
Jon waited until his father had set down the plan. "When the house is ready, I mean to live there with the boys."
Eddard looked up. "Your household may sleep there without you. Your bed is here."
Jon had expected the words. They still made him glance towards the door and the familiar passage beyond it.
"I know. I want to keep the house myself."
"You already give your men their orders."
"And Poole finds their bedding, your kitchens feed them, and Rodrik finds us a piece of yard. I pay what Poole asks. Your people do most of the keeping."
"Because you are my son and still a boy."
"Then let me start less than a mile from your gate, while you can see what I do badly."
Arthur shifted beside the hearth. "I would rather be beside him here when he learns, Ned."
Eddard gave him a flat look. "You are helping."
"I thought so."
"Heward will command the yard," Jon continued, "Wylla my chambers, Elspeth the kitchen. I expect them to answer when I call. I want to live with them, Father. If a boy is sick, Wylla should be able to knock on my door."
"You can ride downhill every morning."
"Then I am visiting my own household and leaving other people to keep it."
The room went quiet.
Eddard's gaze returned to the plan. "Have I ever made you think you had no place here?"
"No, Father."
"Or that Dragonstone changed whose son you are?"
"No." Jon leaned forward. "I want my own house. I do not want to stop being part of yours."
Arthur spoke more quietly. "He will have me, Wylla and Heward below. Luwin is a short ride away. So are you. One day he will have to do this where you cannot look over the wall and see the smoke from his chimney."
Eddard rubbed his thumb along the edge of the drawing. "And when the novelty passes? When it is raining, the roof is leaking and you would rather eat at this table?"
"Then I come to supper, complain about my roof, and go back down to have it mended."
"You will still attend Luwin's lessons," Eddard said. "You will still train here when Rodrik requires you. You come when I summon you, and no man below those walls forgets that the ground is held of Winterfell while you are in my keeping."
"Agreed."
"And no war wall."
"I know."
Eddard looked at Arthur. "If he begins sleeping at the bench because a wheel displeases him, carry him uphill."
"Gladly."
"Uncle Arthur."
"You heard your father."
Eddard drew the plan back towards Jon. "Show me the ground you want."
* * *
Robb came looking for Jon before dinner, with two practice balls beneath one arm. When Jon told him about moving, he set them on the drawing.
"You are at the workshop most days already."
"And you are usually there trying to drag me out of it."
Robb did not smile. "You used to come."
Jon put down the quill. There would always be work unfinished. "Give me the ball."
His brother tossed it across. At the door he turned back to the drawing and put a finger beside Jon's bed. "There is room for another."
"A pallet. If Father and your mother let you stay."
"With a mattress?"
"With a mattress."
Robb went out pleased with the bargain. Jon followed before he could find another.
* * *
The following evening, Jon found Catelyn beside the family hearth with Sansa upon her lap. Arya sat on the rug, pushing a wooden horse through a fortress made from two cushions.
"Robb says you are leaving." Arya blocked the gap between the cushions with her horse. "I am coming."
"The house is not built yet." Jon crouched beside her.
"You cannot live there," Sansa told her. "You live here."
"So does Jon."
Sansa had no answer to that. Her blue eyes moved from Jon to her mother. Catelyn kept one arm around her waist, waiting for him to explain.
"My men will be there, and the workshop," he told Arya. "I must keep the house. Wylla is coming with me."
"Wylla too?" Sansa sat upright.
"Aye."
She looked down at the fire. Catelyn smoothed the auburn hair away from her face, but offered Jon nothing.
Arya took his hand. "Can I bring my horse?"
"When Father gives you leave to visit."
"And Sansa can come."
"I did not say I wanted to."
"Stay here, then."
Sansa's cheeks coloured. "I might come."
"Then you may both choose where he sleeps." Jon touched the wooden horse. Arya immediately began describing a stable larger than any room on Woods's drawing.
Sansa listened without joining in. When Arya paused for breath, she asked, "Will you come tomorrow? To the glass gardens?"
"If you fetch me."
"After lessons." She spoke firmly enough to make him smile.
Arya tugged his hand. "Can we see your house tomorrow too?"
"There is not even a roof."
"I have a cloak."
Sansa giggled. Catelyn rose, lifting her daughter from her lap. "When there is a house to visit, Arya. Supper is waiting."
Jon stood aside to let her pass. She acknowledged him with a small inclination of her head. He wondered whether she welcomed another household taking shape or merely the empty chamber it would leave upstairs. With the girls tugging him towards the door, he had no wish to ask.
* * *
Sansa fetched Jon after lessons the following afternoon, as promised. She had an empty basket upon her arm and waited at the door until he set aside Woods's drawings.
"For Mother," she explained when he glanced at the basket.
He found his cloak, and she slipped her hand into his. The basket knocked against her knee all the way across the yard.
Warmth met them at the garden door. Rain ran down the green and yellow panes above beds of cabbages and young onions. Farther along, flowers crowded the edge of the path, and blackberry canes bowed beneath their fruit. Sansa went straight to the roses.
The gardener rose from the bed where he had been thinning seedlings. He wiped his hands upon his breeches and fetched his knife.
"Those white ones?" he asked her.
Sansa nodded, then pointed to a pale pink bloom. "And that. Please."
Jon rested his hand on the warm stone edging. Water murmured beneath it, and a draught from the open upper panes stirred the leaves. He moved aside as the gardener returned with the roses.
The man stripped the lower thorns before laying them in Sansa's basket. She watched each one go in, moving a leaf aside so the pink flower would show.
"May I have another? For Wylla."
"Choose one she will like." Jon glanced at the gardener, who had already turned back towards the bush.
At the door Sansa stopped beneath the dripping glass. "Wylla likes the pink ones too."
Jon took the basket while she rearranged the flowers. The rain had slackened outside, but she worked carefully, leaving him to hold it until she was satisfied.
* * *
Two mornings after Jon's talk with his sisters, Eddard went with him to look at ground for the new house. Rain shone upon the grass. Jon mounted Bucephalus from the block; his hand had healed, though the new skin was still tender. Catelyn rode her chestnut mare, Arthur a rangy bay. Wylla came on the broad brown palfrey she trusted not to shy at every puddle. Jory and the Stark guards followed as they took the road beyond the winter town.
Eddard gave the stallion a little more room, and Jon brought him alongside with the outer rein. They climbed past the last gardens at a walk.
The first site rose north of the road. Dry turf ran to a stony back. From the crown Jon could see Winterfell's east gate, the roofs below and every cart approaching for half a mile. A ditch and timber wall would command the road.
Arthur dismounted first. He drove a heel into the turf. "Dry footing. Stone near the surface. A small wall makes this hard to rush."
Catelyn remained in the saddle. "A wall here also watches my son's gate."
"It watches any man who comes against it," Arthur said.
"Including Winterfell," Catelyn said. Jon looked from the height to the castle. The site was cheaper because the ground did part of the defence. Whoever held the house after him would inherit the same command of Winterfell's road.
"We could defend it with few men," Jon said.
"And close Winterfell's road," Eddard answered. "I will not permit a fort here."
Arthur looked towards the lower pasture. "That ground is open on three sides."
"Then show me where the house would stand." Jon gathered his reins. "I want to see both."
They rode back past the last gardens to rough pasture. Water shone among reeds along the western edge. Midges rose in grey clouds. Jon put one boot down and sank above the sole. He pulled it free, stirring a brown pool beneath the sedge. The smell of rot lifted from the grass. Wylla covered her nose. "I hope you were not counting that as drinking water."
Arthur looked over the open approach. "This will cost twice the labour."
"At least we could build here without barring Winterfell's road," Jon said.
Eddard dismounted beside him. "The choice is yours. I will forbid a war wall upon the rise. I will not make you take this mud."
Jon walked a little farther along the bank. The eastern ground rose clear of the reeds; there was room for the hall above it, if the old watercourse could be opened.
"I will have Master Branch test the ground before I decide." Branch had spent years digging and draining the fields outside Winter Town.
Wylla dismounted and joined him. She pointed to the castle beyond the roofs. "Near enough to send for Luwin. Let us see where you mean to put the kitchen."
The next morning Jon brought Oren, Alasdair, Master Branch and Woods to the field with three bundles of willow rods. Ralf led the measuring party's horses. Eddard and Catelyn followed with Robb and Wylla, while Jory kept the guards near the road. One cord ran from the high eastern turf towards the reed bed; another followed the old watercourse south. Oren drove a rod every ten paces while Branch tested the depth of wet ground.
"The ground slopes south," Jon said. "Find where the old ditch joins Winter Town's drain. If we build here, we clear that end first, so the water has somewhere to go when we open this one."
The ditcher probed the straight run on Jon's sketch and struck clay. Farther south, the rod found an older cut still carrying water. Jon followed it towards the willows. Flood debris hung above the bank.
"Has it risen higher than this?" he asked.
"Not since I have worked here, my lord."
Alasdair pointed to a fork where grass and twigs had caught above Jon's knee. "The Tankard's pig gate reached the mill that year."
Poole, who had come on a mule with the ground grant in his saddlebag, frowned at the mark. "That lies twelve paces beyond the bank."
Jon tied a black cord to a stake, above the flood mark by the height of two stacked beams. "No floor below this. The pasture may flood; the house must not. Alasdair, ask the older neighbours whether they remember water higher than this."
Woods spread the drawing beneath two cloaks. The counting room faced the road; callers would reach it without crossing the household yard. Jon's chamber lay above, Arthur's beside the stair, and Wylla's opened to his through an inner passage. She made Woods widen the sickroom entrance until a litter could pass straight from the stair.
Elspeth and Mara arrived with the workmen's kettle and soon found faults of their own. Mara wanted a clear path to the well, away from the horses. Elspeth claimed another section of the store for bread and a hatch into the kitchen. Woods glanced at Jon over the drawing.
"Put them in. They have to work here." Jon turned to Elspeth. "Will you keep the kitchen when it stands?"
She glanced at Catelyn. "Gladly, my lord, if Lady Stark will give me leave."
"Not before the next feast," Catelyn said. "Morna can manage the second kitchen. She has yet to learn the larger ovens."
"I can teach her, my lady. She knows the stores already."
Catelyn considered it. "She receives your chamber and key. You remain until she can do the work."
Elspeth curtseyed. "Thank you, my lady."
"Bring me the first month's needs," Jon told Elspeth. "Pots, food and hands. The kitchen must be ready before the boys arrive." She promised it would be.
Heward inspected the yard with his staff keeping time beside his stiff leg. He stopped at the timber stack marked between the sleeping hall and armoury.
"If I call them out armed, I will not have a cart between their beds and their shields." He planted his staff on the mark until Woods moved the stack beyond the stable.
While Heward finished inspecting the yard, Jon joined Ralf at the proposed gate. At Jon's order a carter drove the longest wagon through it. Its rear wheel cut across the corner stake.
"Move that out six paces," Jon said. "There must be room to pass a horse beside it."
Ralf agreed and helped Robb reset the stake. When the wagon had cleared, Jon drew the horseman aside.
"Are you still bound to Osric?"
"No, my lord. My service ended when we brought the teams home."
"What will you do now?"
Ralf rubbed his crooked knee. "My last master sold his horses and took ship. I have my saddle, my eye, and no wish to sleep beneath another cart."
"Ride with me for six days," Jon said. "I need garrons for the boys and a man to teach them horsecraft. You shall have road money, board and a horse master's wage while I judge your work."
Ralf glanced towards Arthur. "And afterwards, my lord?"
"If you suit the post, it is yours."
Ralf pulled his cap off. "I shall be glad to try."
Poole read the ground grant before witnesses. House Black would hold the pasture under Lord Stark, who would oversee the building until Jon came of age. The workshop would remain inside Winterfell until the new one stood dry and locked. The field might have a ditch and an ordinary fence, but no fortified palisade. Jon set his plain black seal beneath the words. Eddard's direwolf followed.
Master Branch opened the lower townward run before any spade touched the upper ditch. Black water moved south with a smell that drove Robb uphill. Only then did Oren clear roots from the pasture end. Alasdair carried stakes, lost one in the mud, and found it with his whole arm while every man nearby offered useless counsel.
Elspeth sent onion broth to the field. Woods's wife brought coarse bread and white cheese. Workers ate upon overturned turf. Jon sat among them with mud to his calves. Eddard lowered himself beside him and accepted the same wooden bowl. Jory and the guards who had come down with him ate a little farther up the bank.
Eddard tasted the broth. "Good."
"Elspeth," Jon said. "She has sent enough for the men still working at the ditch."
His father broke the bread and gave him half. They ate while the ditcher's mattock rang against a buried stone. Jon looked along the cleared channel to see how far the lower cutting had reached.
A beetle climbed out of the upturned turf and disappeared beneath Eddard's cloak. He shook the hem free and moved his bowl to the other knee. Jon held the bread while he did it.
"Benjen would have chosen the dry rise," Eddard said, looking over the field. "Then he would have spent the afternoon racing me down it."
Jon smiled. He had heard enough of Benjen's boyhood to believe it. The damp soil beneath his boots called up a field after rain in his first life, an older man's hands on a spade, the patient work of clearing a ditch that cattle had trodden shut.
"This ground will dry," he said. "The ditch runs downhill. Once the roots are out, the water can drain away."
Eddard looked towards the ditcher and the men waiting with the timber. "I can see why you wanted to come down yourself."
Jon scraped the last barley from his bowl. Across the field Woods raised an arm to ask where the next load should stand. Jon gave his father the empty bowl and went to show him, stepping over the cord that marked the future wall.
At dusk, a thin ribbon of brown water began moving south. Master Branch washed his spade in it and came over to Jon. "With your leave, my lord, I could use Oren until the hall stands. Lord Cerwyn has drains that need building after. I would teach him the trade."
Jon called Oren over. "You heard him. What do you want?"
Oren stood his shovel against the bank. "The ditching, my lord. If you will release me."
"Until the house is built, or as his apprentice?"
"As his apprentice." He touched the black badge on his coat. "I can keep a shield beside another boy. Master Branch says I have an eye for the water."
Jon looked towards the old digger. "Will you take him on those terms?"
"Aye, my lord. Paid work while he learns, here and at Cerwyn."
Jon sent for Heward. The old soldier heard Oren out, then stood beside him while Jon released him from armed service. Poole entered the release beneath his name and read the new hiring aloud. Oren unfastened his black badge and put it into Jon's hand.
"Leave us a dry yard," Jon said. Oren bowed and went back to his shovel.
When the foundations were ready, the timber wagons came down from the road. Woods directed the men as they settled the first beam into place above the height Jon had marked against flooding. Eddard stood beside Jon with the drawing held clear of the rain. Once the beam lay level, Jon went to check where the next would rest.