The swallows still gathered beneath the Old Watch gate when Jon rode down to the river fields. Beyond the wall, men were pitching the last oat sheaves onto a cart. Arthur pulled his horse aside to let it pass. A loose stalk caught in his boot buckle and went with him down the slope.
Miller's Run entered the holding through a stand of alder, crossed below the tower and fell between the rocks where Jon meant to put his wheel. Farther down, it curved east and left the leased ground. On the western bank, old field walls disappeared beneath briar. Two empty crofts faced a byre whose thatch had sunk between the rafters.
Jon dismounted beside the nearer croft. Through its open door he could see nettles growing around the hearth. A row of empty nests clung beneath the lintel.
"Woods says the walls will bear another roof," he told Arthur. "The byre needs new timbers. I shall have them here before the next families come."
Arthur looked beyond him at the rushes. "You have men enough asking for the spear."
"I need ploughmen as well. Men who can tell me what this soil will grow." Jon put his reins over his arm and led Bucephalus down the bank. "I can try a new plough here and still reach the clock benches before dinner. Dragonstone will need its own crops and drains, but the men I take south will have seen this work done."
Bucephalus lowered his head towards a thistle. Jon drew him clear.
"These families will stay," he added. "Father has agreed that their holdings pass back to Winterfell with the tower. The rent stays as we agree it now."
Arthur took the stallion's reins while Jon went farther down on foot. The ground sucked at his heels. He hitched his plain black coat above the mud and tucked its skirts through his belt. By the water, he crouched and pulled a mat of grass from the mouth of an old ditch. Beneath it lay black mud and a broken stone lip.
He followed the old channel until it vanished beneath a tumble of field stone. Beyond it, the higher ground was dry enough to crumble between his fingers. Someone had worked this land before the cottages emptied. The ridges were still there under the grass, and along the far wall an apple tree held a few small, hard fruits.
Jon looked back towards the tower. From the high window he would be able to see these fields and the road to the works. He had spent years in another life driving out before dawn to find a pump, a fence or a gate that needed attention. Here he could ride the whole holding before breakfast.
He brought a lump of the upper soil back to Arthur. "Have Perkin send for the families as soon as their harvest is in. Woods can begin the roofs while we clear the water."
Arthur gave him the reins. The lump broke apart as Jon slipped his glove on, scattering crumbs over his black sleeve.
* * *
At the next market Jon had the bellman call for farmers. This time he stayed beside the well while the man read, with Perkin seated beneath the adjoining awning.
"Land at Miller's Run for families willing to settle it. Shelter on arrival, with cottages to be repaired for the settlers. Seed and the first provisions supplied. No rent before the first crop is brought in. Those accepted will keep the husbandry Lord Black sets upon the holding."
The crowd was smaller than the one which had heard the call for spears. Men listened beside wives with market baskets. A few had brought children. There was less laughter and more asking the bellman to repeat himself.
A grey-haired man listened to Perkin's rent terms, then stepped aside to consult his wife. The next wanted to know whether he must bring his own oxen.
"You needn't own oxen," Jon said. "Tell Perkin what you have, and the work you know."
By noon they had names from several lordships. A woman with two boys received directions for her husband to meet Jon after finishing his present lord's harvest. One family withdrew at the amount of draining; another went with the woodward to see the croft before deciding.
A week later six households gathered below the Old Watch, where canvas shelters stood ready upon the dry ground beside the byre. They had brought tools and bedding in handcarts and upon pack ponies; one man carried a cradle with his spade tied across it. Jon rode down to meet them, passing the new barracks where Hewyn's men were putting their shields away. Beside the river a woman had spread a cloth upon the grass for her youngest children. The others waited with their caps in their hands while Perkin read the names.
Gerren, who had driven the first cart, bowed with his cap against his belly. He had worked his elder brother's land near Cerwyn until the brother's sons were old enough to do without him.
"Your lordship means to let us the fields beyond the byre?"
"The sound ground. The wet bottom stays meadow until we can drain what is worth draining." Jon stepped over a fallen doorpost. "Come and look."
Gerren followed him inside. His wife remained by the cart, watching Woods's men lift a new ridge beam onto trestles.
"You will owe labour on the common drains and keep the ground in the crops I set," Jon said. "Your own garden lies behind the house."
Gerren rubbed mortar between his fingers. "And when you go south, my lord?"
"You remain. Lord Stark has agreed it."
The man glanced through the doorway towards his wife. She had begun untying the loom.
Spearmen tightened the canvas shelters by the byre. Once roofed, the crofts would take two households; until more dwellings were ready, the settlers shared a fire beside their carts. Jon showed them the future doors and garden fences. One man measured a doorway with his shoulders; another asked to bring the fruit tree from his former home.
"If it can be moved without killing it," Jon said. "Ask Gerren to help you choose the place."
When they came back towards the crofts, Gerren's wife was waiting beside the door. Her name was Merra. She asked for a window beside the hearth, wide enough to work by.
Woods joined them from the byre. Jon looked at the sun and moved round the corner to see the slope. "Put the loom against this wall. You will get light from the east. Woods, give her a shutter here."
She curtseyed and went back to the cart. When Jon passed again on his way to the ditch, she had taken the boy from between the turnip sacks and wrapped him in a blanket upon the ground. Her husband was holding up two pieces of the dismantled loom while she told him which belonged together. Farther along, a hen escaped its wicker crate and the children went after it, checked at once by a sharp word from their mother when their chase reached Jon's horse.
Ten spearmen helped the settlers clear the ditch that afternoon. Jon and Symon opened its broken stone lip, then worked uphill from the outlet, sloping the sides against the rain. Symon showed the new hands how to lever out roots. By dusk the lowest hollow was draining, though the farther ground still would not bear a cart. Jon checked it each morning on his way to the Black Yard.
Upstream, with Gerren's elder son holding the measuring line, Jon marked a channel around the hillside towards the upper garden. Gerren followed him away from the crofts until the ground flattened and Jon turned the line back towards them.
"Cut straight down there and Merra will still be carrying buckets uphill," Jon told him.
Gerren looked along the line. "Will it come so far with scarcely any fall?"
"Come tomorrow and see."
Woods fitted a wooden hatch at the mouth, above the proposed wheel. Jon opened it when the first length was ready. Merra followed the water with her skirts gathered up; Gerren's elder son ran ahead, and two women came from the shelters to watch. At the bend Jon scraped away a ridge left by a spade. The thin stream crossed his fingers and gathered again towards the garden.
"All the way from there," Merra said. She looked uphill, then at the buckets beside her door. "And we can let it in when we need it?"
"Once the sides are finished. Show her the hatch, Gerren. You will both need to work it—and close it if the run falls low."
Gerren called his son back to help raise the low side. Merra stayed until Jon shut the hatch, watching the last of the water disappear into the thirsty ground.
The new roof timbers went up while they dug. Smoke returned to the crofts. More families came to look, and Woods began a second row on the dry rise. Jon found children collecting fallen twigs there one evening; they stood aside with their bundles and watched him pass.
* * *
William returned from Barrow Hall with mud on his boots and Lord Dustin's steward's receipt folded inside his coat. The clock had kept its hours through the trial. Lady Barbrey had made him show the steward twice how to silence the bell at night.
"She heard it from her chamber?" Jon asked.
"No, my lord. She said I was to make him do it with his eyes shut."
Woods laughed and went back to the case he was fitting. Perkin counted the balance William had brought, paid the last of the journey's charges and closed the Dustin account.
Osric's packet arrived that afternoon with an Oldtown merchant: Leyton's final six hundred dragons, acceptance of the Hightower clock and recommendations for nine prospective recruits. The clock's four faces had shown the same hour throughout the trial, and its keeper was now winding it without help.
Osric had found the first two candidates through Leyton's factor, the others after speaking to the Seneschal while the clock was fitted. Among the nine were men who knew healing, metalwork, building and accounts. He would bring them north once he had arranged their passages.
With the final payment, the Hightower clock had brought eighteen hundred dragons. The two counting-house clocks were settled as well. Perkin added the last fitting wages and carriage to the costs already entered.
"Close the clock accounts," Jon said. "Their passage belongs with the men I am hiring."
William compared Callum's fitting report with their drawing. A shaft had rubbed when the clock was fixed against the Oldtown wall; Callum had adjusted it before the trial.
"I shall test mine again once it is fitted," William promised, marking the place. Jon left him to it.
Perkin put the Hightower account with the completed work. Highgarden and the Rock were next: the rose case ready, the lion still awaiting its movement. William had two plain clocks to finish before either left, and three more merchants had paid earnest.
"One at a time upon my bench," Jon said, giving him the lion drawing. "Fit the clockwork first. Leave the moving paws until we can do them together."
William pulled his stool nearer. Arthur took the recruits' recommendations beyond reach of the brass filings.
* * *
Ewan and Jon worked on the new plough between the clock orders.
The plough's curved iron mouldboard would lift and turn the soil after the blade cut it. Jon carved a wooden pattern for Ewan to shape the iron against. Twice he sent a piece back: its edge stood proud of the next and would catch the earth instead of letting it slide.
The cutting share was separate, so a worn blade could be changed without making the whole plough anew. Woods brought an ash beam and the handles; Jon helped him fit the ironwork, driving the smaller pins while Ewan seated the heavy ones.
Gerren came when they had it assembled. He took off his cap at the door and waited until Jon beckoned him to the bench. For a while he touched only the wood. Then he bent to examine the iron curve, following it from the share to its broad upper edge.
"There is a deal of iron in that, my lord."
"It must hold this shape. Bare wood would soon lose the curve I want." Jon took the wooden form from beneath the bench and set it beside the finished mouldboard.
Gerren turned the form over. "You cut this yourself?"
"Aye." Jon held it against the iron curve to show him the fit.
Ewan loosened the fastening and drew the cutting blade free. Gerren set his cap down and crouched for a better look.
"Will your lordship have it drawn by horses?"
"Oxen. Garrick is buying trained pairs."
"The lower ground will tire them soon enough."
"We shall begin above it." Jon showed him the fittings at the beam. "The pull can be shifted here. You know the teams. Work with me until we have it drawing straight."
Cold rain delayed them for weeks. A skin of ice formed overnight in the horse trough and broke beneath a bucket next morning. Jon kept the oxen on the firm road, where Symon walked the unfamiliar teams in their new yokes. The plough waited beneath the byre roof, its iron greased against rust.
When the weather softened and a handful of the upper soil crumbled instead of smearing across his palm, Jon brought it out. Ewan came to watch the ironwork under strain; Arthur waited with the horses at the headland.
He walked behind the handles with Gerren beside him. Symon led the oxen. Their shoulders moved under the yoke; the beam tightened, and the share entered the ground. Earth climbed the mouldboard and rolled over with its grass beneath it.
The first length took them along the old headland. Jon felt the pull through both arms and settled his weight behind the handles, guiding rather than forcing the share down. Small roots tore with a sound like cloth parting. Gerren kept pace beside him, watching the clean face of the furrow. At its end Jon stopped the team and had him help shift the hitch. On the return the sideways strain eased. The rhythm came back more readily than the strength. As a boy in his first life he had wanted farm work finished so he could get to his books; as an old man he had found reasons to walk the fields after supper. He understood that last habit best now.
"Keep it there," Jon said. "Let it turn the earth."
He gave Gerren the handles and walked beside him while they made the next length. The man had spent more of his life behind oxen than Jon had spent in this body. He soon found the feel of it, eased one handle and laid the next slice of earth beside the first. His sons followed with a basket for stones. At the far end he stopped, planted the handles and looked back down the furrow.
"That has buried the grass, my lord."
"Aye. We shall harrow it before sowing."
Gerren bent over the turned sod and broke its edge with his thumb. "I used to send the boys through after me with mattocks." He beckoned his elder son to look. The lad knelt, pulled at a tuft buried beneath the furrow, then looked along the whole length they had just turned.
"Fetch your mother," Gerren told him.
By the time they reached the far end again, Merra was waiting with her knitting caught beneath one arm. Gerren made her walk the furrow. He had begun explaining before he remembered Jon was beside him, and stopped with a muttered apology.
"Show her," Jon said. "You know what work it has saved."
Another farmer came from the byre and asked to try. Gerren walked beside him while Jon watched the join between the plates. The soil shed cleanly.
"I could use another team now," the farmer said when he halted. "If your lordship will have another of these made."
"When Ewan has finished this one. The hitch needs an easier fastening. Bring your eldest to the next trial."
The man lingered beside the mouldboard until Gerren called him to help move the team. Behind them Merra was asking how much more ground they could manage.
By noon dark furrows crossed the field and the stone basket had been filled twice. Merra brought bread; Wylla arrived with onions and barley. Arthur cut the loaf while Jon washed, then they sat together upon the cart bed. Merra broke her youngest boy's bread into his broth.
"The loom is yours?" Jon asked.
"My mother's before me." She glanced towards the byre. "I have been weaving through the wet days. If your women have need of plain cloth."
"Bring Mairi, my seamstress, a piece when you have one ready. There are shirts to make as well as coats."
Merra looked at Gerren, who was eating too quickly to answer at once. He swallowed and nodded. The older boy asked whether the soldiers' black cloth came from black sheep, and Wylla told him that the best of it did. She had spent enough mornings separating shades to have an opinion on the matter. Gerren reached for another piece of bread while they talked. Beyond the cart, one of the oxen lay down, folding its great forelegs beneath it with a sigh.
After the meal, Jon walked the fields with the ploughman. Beyond the newly turned earth lay another long strip, the rough ground beside the byre and a sheltered enclosure against the western wall.
"Four fields," Jon said. "Barley, clover, rye and turnips. Each takes those crops in turn. The clover feeds the beasts, and the turnips help us keep them through the cold."
"My wife tends our turnip patch," Gerren said. "There is work in that much hoeing." He looked across the strips. "And which field rests, my lord?"
"The clover takes the place of bare fallow. Grain after grain takes the goodness out; clover helps put it back. I shall want your wife's help with the roots. I mean to grow enough for the byre as well as the pot."
Gerren looked back at the oxen. "She wanted another cow. We had no hay to spare."
"Let us bring in the first cutting before you buy her one."
"Aye, my lord." Gerren's eyes moved to the clover ground. "Will your lordship have us keep the grass cut apart, then, so we know how much?"
"Yes. I will pay for the extra hands. We shall begin with these four strips and keep seed from what grows best." Jon knelt and broke a clod along the furrow. "The lower meadow stays in grass. We have enough to bring under the plough."
Merra joined them to reckon the seed and hands needed for the root strip. She would use the spacing from her garden, with paths left for the hoers. When Jon asked about storing the sound roots dry and covered, she showed him an old pit beyond the wall. It stood above the ditch, half filled with rubbish; he had it cleared and left open to dry.
Before Jon left, Gerren called his sons over and explained the next morning's work. Jon listened beside the cart. In four years he wanted men on Dragonstone who could teach it as plainly.
They first tested seed from each sack on damp linen to see whether it would sprout. Over the following days they sowed barley, rye upon the lighter ground and clover beyond it. Jon and Merra marked rows for the turnips. Behind the byre, the lads piled bedding, dung, leaves and spoiled fodder to rot, clear of the stream.
When the turnip seedlings were large enough, Jon and Merra returned to thin the crowded rows.
Gerren's youngest daughter found Jon at the root ground with the dinner Wylla had sent. He ate upon the boundary wall while the harrow crossed the brown earth. Across the run, Woods's men were lifting another beam beneath the broken tower.
* * *
Gawen had Jon's arming coat waiting when he returned from the fields. Aries laid out the smaller pieces while Jon washed. Gawen turned the helm over beneath the dusty shelf and gave him a clean cloth to spread under it. The boy checked the lining before bringing Jon his coat.
Gawen settled the heavy pieces and left Aries the straps within his reach. The first pulled tight enough for Jon to catch his hand. "I shall want to breathe." Gawen loosened it; Aries tried again, then felt beneath the collar while Jon raised his arms and bent for the shield. It no longer drew across his throat.
"Leave the sword belt for Gawen until you can manage it without dragging the scabbard on the floor," Jon said. Aries looked at the belt, then stood back for the knight.
After practice Gawen made him return each piece dry to its place. Aries tried to leave a buckle beneath the cloth. Jon found it and called him back.
Wylla sat nearby mending the elbow of the little black coat. She watched Aries take the buckle without argument and set it down again only after cleaning beneath its tongue. When she called him to try the sleeve, he came with his hands held out to show they were clean.
While Gawen took the horses out, Jon cleared the little table and laid down a worn copy of the northern road map. Aries came back from Wylla with his mended sleeve rolled up to admire the stitching.
"Here," Jon said, setting a fingertip beside Winterfell. "Find where we are."
Aries bent over the ink. "Where's the pig pens?"
"Too small to show."
"They're bigger than that." He pointed to the little square which stood for the castle.
"The square tells you where Winterfell is. It does not show the size of the walls." Jon traced the kingsroad south with his finger. "This takes you out of the town. Follow it with me."
At the turning towards White Harbor, Aries chose the wrong road. Jon brought him back to Osric's route with the clocks, then set the coast chart beside the map. Arthur held the curling corner while Aries followed the sea south to Dragonstone.
"If it's yours, why do you live here?"
"I am preparing the men and the work we shall take there. Ethan, my castellan, keeps it for me."
Aries pointed back to White Harbor. Jon told him it belonged to Lord Manderly, whose harbour they paid to use, then gave him a scrap and charcoal to draw the journey.
Aries made a boat with a horse almost as large as its hull. While Jon put the charts away, the vessel acquired a second horse and a strip of land for them to reach.
* * *
The cyvasse set from White Harbor reached the Black Yard with a merchant's next parcel of brass. Its box had plain iron hinges and smelled faintly of the cinnamon packed beside it. Jon unwrapped the pieces, checked them against the book and took the whole thing up to Winterfell that afternoon.
Luwin cleared his table beneath the rookery window and showed Jon the pieces and the ground before raising the screen. A raven began knocking its cage bar; the maester went up to settle it while Jon arranged his army. By the time Robb found them, Luwin had taken two of Jon's horses. Robb leaned over his brother's shoulder.
"You could take—"
"Let me finish this one." Jon brought his dragon forward. For three moves he thought he had troubled the maester. Then Luwin took his king.
"Again," Jon said.
"After Robb has had his turn." Luwin set the captured king upright and showed Jon where the trouble had begun. Robb was already drawing the box towards him.
Jon surrendered the stool, but stayed to see whether Robb could do better. At supper time Robb made the servant wait while Luwin explained why he would lose his horse.
Arthur waited outside. "How did you fare?" he asked in High Valyrian.
"I lost," Jon admitted in the same tongue.
"Against Luwin? You are in good company." Arthur took the box. Robb asked to borrow it the next evening; Jon agreed, provided he brought every piece back.
Jon had enjoyed himself, even in defeat. He wanted another game against Luwin now that he understood the pieces, but he also wanted to put Robb across a board whose rules he knew. He had played chess for most of his former life; the prospect of teaching his brother brought back his appetite for it. That night he drew an eight-by-eight board and set down the shapes of all thirty-two pieces.
Woods found a strip of dry birch among the offcuts. The men could be cut from it, he said, but no one was to expect fine horses' heads from a carpenter who had roofs to finish. Jon asked only that the pieces could be told apart. He inked the board himself while the glue dried beneath its frame.
Robb came upon him a few evenings later with the pale men arranged before an empty chair. He set down the mittens he had brought from Winterfell and examined a knight.
"Where are the elephants?"
"There are none. This is a different game." Jon moved the chair out with his foot. "Sit. You can have the pale side."
"What is it called?"
"Chess."
The knight's move troubled Robb longest. Jon showed him twice, then let him take back the queen he had left exposed. When Robb left her exposed again, Jon kept the captured piece beside his cup. Robb stared at the gap in his line and began making room for a tower.
Arthur stopped behind his chair. "Your king."
"I can see him." Robb bent lower. "Jon, wait."
Jon waited. Robb's frown over the board was giving him almost as much pleasure as the game. When the meal bell sounded, Robb asked whether they might eat there. Jon sent for bread and cheese, and Arthur took the spare stool.
Hewyn came in as they were finishing and returned the following evening to try it. Jon had a second board made for the officers' room. He wrote out the moves in a few plain lines and left the sheet with it, but for the first week men were forever coming to ask about a pawn at the far edge or a king that had nowhere to go. He went back with them when he could. Before long he was finding his chair occupied and two more men waiting to challenge the winner.
Robb borrowed the first set for an evening at Winterfell. When Jon arrived for supper, he found it in the family room, with Sansa in Robb's chair and Theon opposite her. Jeyne had drawn a stool close to Sansa. Robb stood behind them, trying to explain a move neither had asked him about.
"That tower cannot go through your own man," he said.
"I was moving him out of the way." Sansa set down the pawn she held. "You said I could move him two places at the beginning."
"You can," Jon said from the doorway. Sansa looked round at once, and Robb made room for him.
Theon turned one of the dark pieces upon its base. "Who taught you this? Luwin says it is not in his book."
"Jon made it," Robb said. "The board and all the moves." There was pride in the way he said it. Jon took the chair beside the hearth, close enough to see the game without standing over Sansa.
Theon put the piece back and looked up at Robb. "And you know them all?"
"Enough to beat you," Robb said.
"After me." Sansa waited until Theon looked at the board again before moving her pawn. Jeyne whispered something to her, then pressed her lips together when Robb leaned nearer.
Arya came to Jon with a captured knight in each hand. He made a place for her beside him and showed her the carved heads. She preferred the dark one; its nose had come out longer. Across the room Robb caught himself reaching over Sansa's shoulder and drew his hand back. A few moves later she took Theon's tower.