Chapter Text
By the time Sansa comes up on deck, the horizon has vanished.
The wooden planks creak beneath her boots as the sea’s wintry gale, chilled with brine and salt, sweeps through her plaited hair and woolen cloak. The choppy waters off the coast of Crackclaw Point have long since given way to calmer seas just a handful of leagues from the easternmost cliffs of the Vale. When they sailed south, on clear days, Sansa could see the highest distant peaks of the Mountains of the Moon, misty and ephemeral.
At this hour of the night though, with no moon to light their way, the only thing to be seen in the void of pitch are the lanterns attached to the masts of their little knot of ships. The earlier storms have retreated past the horizon for the time being so the sheets of stars are not curtained behind clouds. But on a moonless night, the stars shimmer in the mirrored blackness of the sea, the horizon impossible to distinguish.
A few of the northern sailors nod their heads to her as she passes, but her eyes are on the figure standing near the prow of their ship. She had expected him to be in his cabin at this hour but she thinks it is better that he is here instead. She approaches him quietly, reaching his side to gaze out at the abyss of darkness splayed out in front of them. For a long moment, neither of them speaks.
Then Petyr Baelish says, “I’m sure you’re relieved to be going home.”
“I leave one war to return to another one,” Sansa answers. The sea winds are bitterly cold, though she knows that they will only get worse as they sail into the southern parts of the Shivering Sea. She adjusts her deerskin gloves with a frown. “There was no reason for me to stay on Dragonstone, not with Arya there.”
Her reunion with her sister had been peculiar. If Jon had sent a raven to Dragonstone to tell her that Arya had also returned to Winterfell, the bird had never reached the island. Seeing her sister after seven years’ absence had left Sansa feeling unmoored for hours. Then, as the two sisters spoke up about all the happenings at Winterfell and about Jon’s parentage and about the belligerence that existed between Jon and Daenerys (a belligerence perhaps rectified after spending a night together? Sansa hasn’t asked for details), the conversation had only become more stranger. It wasn’t until Sansa had departed Dragonstone that she realized Arya had spoken very little of all that she had done in the intervening years between King Robert’s death and now.
Almost as though she'd been avoiding telling Sansa more.
She frowns as she casts her eyes out on the sea. She regrets not being able to stay on Dragonstone for a few days more, to talk to the long-lost little sister who had arrived in the south on a mission. But the captain of the ship had been adamant that they make haste, noting that their voyage north had already been delayed long enough as they awaited the queen’s return to the island. She might have waited there in the south until Daenerys brought her armies north, but that might be long months into the future. And heaven knows that she needs to get a hold of her brother to make sure he continues to see the sense of the marriage alliance.
My cousin, not my brother, Sansa corrects herself silently with an inward grimace. Even now, over a week after they departed Dragonstone, that bit of information still leaves her stunned. There is a part of her that acknowledges that it does make some sense—that part of her grieves that Father’s most famously dishonorable act was actually one of honor after all. Ned Stark had loved his sister and the child she bore so much that he sullied his name to keep this secret safe until his death.
Sansa knows that Lyanna was around Arya’s age when she died but beyond that, so much of her aunt remains a mystery. Father had never spoken of her and Mother had only mentioned her once or twice to Sansa, telling her rare secondhand stories she’d learned from her husband. She knows that Lyanna had been a skilled rider and had loved roses, but she knows little and less of the young woman’s demeanor.
How much of her lives on in Jon? Clearly, her son must favor her in his coloring, or else the lie never would have held these past twenty-some years. But what of his disposition? She knows only a little more of Rhaegar Targaryen but it is enough for Sansa to assume that, despite the Targaryens’ reputation for courting fire and blood, Jon’s icy temper came from his mother, not his father.
At least, she admits, that Jon and Daenerys seem to have complementary tempers, considering their blood relation. And despite not meaning to, Sansa may have strengthened the possible Targaryen restoration by creating a marriage alliance between the daughter and grandson of the last Targaryen king.
It is a dangerous secret to keep, Sansa knows—the political chaos of Rhaegar Targaryen’s son being alive and ruling as King in the North might be far-reaching if that knowledge becomes widely known. She is aware that Jon has no ambitions for the Iron Throne—he barely tolerates leading the North as its chosen king—but if the rest of the realm finds out? Jon is the blood of a mostly beloved Targaryen prince and the nephew of the honorable Ned Stark. There is no doubt in her mind that if given the choice between him, the mad Lannister queen, and the foreign Targaryen conqueror, Westeros would choose her cousin without question.
It is a tempting future to contemplate…and she cannot allow it to happen.
“I’d often wondered what happened to your sister after your father was arrested,” Littlefinger muses. “There were rumors, of course, but so many rumors were spread in those dark days after Joffrey became king.”
Arya had mentioned that she was there that day Ilyn Payne had taken their father’s head from his shoulders, though she had been unable to reach him in time to do anything. Sansa’s belly had twisted upon hearing that, to know that her sister had been close, that they’d both been so close to Father and had been powerless to save him. In the nights since she has left Dragonstone, Sansa’s dreams have been plagued by the memory, of pleading screams and of salty tears that burned hot on her cheeks and of a faceless crowd roaring for vengeance.
She dreams now of blood. Of death.
“I would have liked to hear more of her story,” is all Sansa admits aloud. “We left far too quickly after her arrival for me to hear all of it. I barely got to know everything that has been happening in Winterfell since I’ve been gone.”
“Your brother seems to have done a fine job at ruling in your absence.”
His constant arguments with Daenerys notwithstanding, Sansa thinks. She says, “He’s good at it.”
“Is he?” When Sansa shoots Littlefinger a look, the man offers her a wan and apologetic smile. “Forgive me, my lady. I don’t mean to disparage your brother. But you have to admit that men more clever than he have been in positions of power and have failed.”
“You don’t need to convince me.” Sansa cannot keep the exasperation out of her tone. “I am well aware of my brother’s weaknesses as a ruler. It’s the reason why I traveled to Dragonstone in the first place.”
“Regardless, your brother seems to have made an impression on the queen.”
“Do you want me to be jealous?”
“I want you to be cautious,” Littlefinger warns. The persuasive lilt of his voice flattens as he gives her an assessing look. There is a shrewd sheen in the man’s eyes, the calculations that Sansa has come to know too well these past few years. Cersei plays the game with a claymore but Petyr Baelish is as careful as a lady with her needlepoint. He continues, “Daenerys Targaryen has three grown dragons at her disposal and she has rarely been one to hold back in using them against people she perceives as enemies.”
“Thank you, my lord. I was quite unaware.”
“Sansa.” She looks back at him and finds herself mildly surprised by the chastising expression on his face. He reaches a gloved hand up to caress her cheek—his touch is icy cold. “I have played this game for far too long. Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? It was already a gamble with Cersei, but the lioness has at least been cornered in her cage.”
Cornered but not defanged. Cersei still has the strength of the capital and the westerlands and Euron Greyjoy’s burgeoning fleet. Despite its appearance, the war in the south has not been at a stalemate. Sansa knows that Cersei is weaving her alliances just as Sansa has been strengthening hers. Ravens have been crisscrossing the realm, trying to sway lords to one side or to plant doubts on the other. Sansa does not doubt that there are daggers in the night that she might still not be aware of—despite her reservations, she is very much aware that it would be foolish to make an obvious enemy of Daenerys Targaryen.
Choosing her words carefully, she says with a shrug, “I need Daenerys to be our ally until Cersei has been defeated.”
“Lord Tyrion and Lord Varys have been watching you. They know that you plan on betraying them.”
Sansa recalls her conversation with Lord Varys, the understanding that had passed between them about the games atop the games she is playing, and buries her smile. She replies, “It is why I told Daenerys that it was a game. I told her that I planned on betraying you.”
Littlefinger is silent for a moment. To his credit, he does not look surprised. In fact, there is a glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes, just as she assumed there might be. “Oh?”
“How better to have her trust me than to admit it?”
But Littlefinger only clucks his tongue. He takes a step closer to her. His body radiates heat in the frozen winter night and Sansa can taste salt on her tongue. He is not afraid, Sansa knows. Why should he be? A man like Littlefinger does not survive the machinations of court or the violence of war by being blind or stupid. Even the Bolton alliance and her subsequent marriage to Ramsay are part of his schemes, though she only has a faint idea of what he gained from it beyond her scorn and mistrust.
So when he reaches up to cup her face in his hands, she lets him. She has become very good at pretending to be a fledgling hawk around this man, a little bird still testing its wings of betrayal and cunning. When he swipes a thumb over her bottom lip, she lets herself take in an uncertain breath.
“A clever move, my lady,” he murmurs. “But do you think I didn’t already know that?”
So he has been watching her, just as she knows he would. She grimaces. “You are not an easy man to trust. You’ve already betrayed me once. Why should I not do everything in my power to make sure you don’t betray me again?”
The words are wind but Sansa has long since learned that even the most clever of men can be blinded the higher they rise. With Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen feuding, with the war to the south threatening to boil over at any point, and with Jon distracted by dangers beyond the Wall, it will only take one well-placed whisper to send all of them toppling into the abyss. Madwomen and foreigners and bastards—how easy it is to ingratiate oneself to people terrified of everything except the familiar. It is a whisper that Sansa has helped him craft, a whisper that she must use to root out threats.
A picture of me on the Iron Throne…and you by my side.
You, my love, are the future of House Stark.
He is close to power and he knows that she will do anything to wrap herself in that same power to protect herself.
“I know you have been hurt,” Littlefinger tells her, his voice soft with what she might call in anyone else compassion. “I know what Ramsay did to you. I know the horrors that you suffered in the capital because of the Lannisters. But it doesn’t have to always be that way. I will make sure that you have the power to never be hurt again. You know I will do this for you.”
“Daenerys is as formidable an ally as she might be an enemy.”
“Yet she is merely a girl. And history has told us that dragons are not gods.” He leans forward, near enough for a kiss. “They are distracted by little conquests. Even your brother cannot see beyond the threat in the north. But you are far more clever than any of them, my love. You were meant to be a queen.”
Then he kisses her.
And for the first time, Sansa lets him.
It is not a demanding kiss. She might even call it chaste, especially compared to the brutal kisses Ramsay had forced upon her when he raped her. She tastes the salt and bitter wine on his tongue, the triumph and the cold. It is not something she wants and it is not something she will ever be tempted by. But she lets him have this dreamed sweetness, a promise of what might be once the games have come crashing to a close, once he sits on the Iron Throne with a she-wolf by his side.
She feels one of his hands glide down her arm to rest on the small of her back, pulling her closer. She has nightmares still of Ramsay doing the same, of treating her with a facsimile of gentleness in front of the Bolton soldiers and grim-eyed servants brought from the Dreadfort. She remembers the way he would kiss her cheek, calling her his lovely bride before dragging her into a locked bedchamber.
Littlefinger must sense the steel that abruptly infuses itself into Sansa’s spine because he whispers, “Have no fear, sweetling. What you know of love is a twisted mockery of it.” His thumb strokes her cheek. “I would never treat you cruelly. A woman’s pleasure is a delicate thing but it is something you deserve.”
“And how,” Sansa breathes, “do I know that I am not simply a replacement for my mother?”
She can almost taste his smile.
“Your mother never would have survived the choices you made.”
No, but she would have given her life to make sure I never had to make them in the first place. Sansa pulls away from Littlefinger, averting her gaze to stare instead out over the sea. As she does so, she does not miss the way some of the crew watch her out of the corner of their eyes. Good.
“I do not look for pleasure, my lord. I have had my taste of the horrors of it.” Yet when Littlefinger drops his hand away, she adds in a quieter voice, “But perhaps I will learn a…different way soon.”
His returning smile sends a dagger of ice slicing down her spine.
But when Brienne asks her about it several days later, having heard the rumor spread by the crew of the gentle rebuffing of an illicit kiss (as Sansa had known the rumor would spread), Sansa can only sigh. There is no room for secrets aboard such a ship and she knows that the bulkheads are listening. The murmur of the sea cannot hide the intricacies of her game.
“I do not like that man,” her sworn shield mutters from the door where she stands guard. Sansa has little and less to fear from the crew, but she respects Brienne’s need to protect her. “If someone like Lord Tyrion mistrusts him, then I don’t think you should either.”
“Littlefinger has protected me better than most,” Sansa replies. She sits on the narrow bunk within the cabin, focusing absently on the needlework in her lap. When Brienne scoffs, she offers her a smile. “Present company notwithstanding.”
“He sold you to the Boltons, heavens know why.”
“And now the Boltons are dead.” She gives Brienne a quizzical look. “He supports this alliance between Jon and Daenerys. As long as he believes one side has a better chance of winning, he will support it. It makes sense that I would do everything in my power to make sure that their combined strength is enough to defeat Cersei.”
But Brienne doesn’t look convinced.
“I see the way he looks at you, my lady,” she says after a long moment. “It is not simply power he wants. He wants you in his bed. The men on the ship have already said that he kissed you.” Sansa’s own smile turns bitter and she pierces the cloth in her hands with more force than is necessary.
“You do not need to worry about my maidenhead, Brienne. I am a woman twice married and once widowed.” When Brienne only grimaces, she chooses her next words carefully. “Supporting Jon and Daenerys is a logical choice. Cersei offers nothing for any of us. I can settle for far worse than a man whose ambition aligns with a logical alliance.”
“Your brother would never approve of it.”
“Littlefinger is Lord Protector of the Vale,” Sansa reminds her. “A marriage to him is politically sound. And at least he is a man whose ambitions I know well. It would not be the most terrible thing in the world.”
Jon will never agree to it, of course—she knows that her brother (cousin, she corrects herself yet again) mistrusts and dislikes Littlefinger for all of the scheming that had resulted in Sansa’s marriage to Ramsay. Perhaps Daenerys might see the wisdom of it…but Sansa immediately ends that line of thinking. It does not matter if either Jon or Daenerys will approve of a marriage between her and Baelish.
In the end, there will be no option for her at all.
“Jon will have to marry me to someone eventually,” Sansa continues, turning her attention back to her needlepoint. “I see no reason to worry about it now.”
Brienne, apparently seeing that she has lost this argument, nods her head reluctantly, though her disapproving frown does not vanish. Sansa wonders if her sworn shield sees more of Littlefinger’s shadow in her as the days pass. She does not regret playing the role if it keeps the people she loves safe, though she doubts any of them will ever forgive her for treating them as pieces on the board.
Always keep your foes confused. Sansa remembers Littlefinger telling her that once. If her enemies do not know who she is or what she wants, they can’t know what she plans to do next. When they arrive in White Harbor, she knows which lords she will send ravens to, what messages they must contain to secure the safety of all that she holds dear.
It is a lonely road, and cruel. But Sansa has already lived through nightmare after nightmare, loss after loss. She will not lose her home. She will not lose her family.
Not again.
The day has dawned bright and cold and already the courtyard is filled with the sounds of arrows thudding into wooden shields.
Missandei broke her fast on bread and sausage and wine before venturing out to the high walkway that overlooked one of the main courtyards of the immense castle. The early hours have been set aside for archery and as more of the castle’s residents stumble out to the courtyard, bleary-eyed and yawning, Qhono and other trained warriors are ready for them, already going through informal drills with their less-than-skilled trainees. She has to hide a smile when she sees that some of the more sharp-eyed archers are young women, barely more than girls, and often not of wildling stock. She knows Daenerys would have been satisfied to see that.
She misses her friend. While she has not been mistreated since the queen departed for Dragonstone and the king and Ser Davos have extended every kind of hospitality to her, she knows that she is still a stranger here. It had not stopped numerous knights and minor lords from attempting to court her in those first few days. Most did not have the gallantry of Brandon Tallhart and she suspects that many more only saw her as an exotic trinket who might garner them favor with the queen.
Eventually though, the attempts had become far less blatant. She had made an offhand mention of it to Ser Davos when having supper with him one night and the old knight had chuckled.
“The king threatened to crack their heads together if they didn’t stop making fools of themselves,” he had told her with a laugh, clarifying that the king hadn’t used those exact words but the message had been the same. When Missandei had expressed her gratitude, Ser Davos had only smiled kindly. “I’d tell you the king has a good heart, but I think you already know that.”
She does. Even before that meeting with the lords to announce the marriage alliance, Missandei had gathered that the king was kind, though clearly he had been reluctant to show that side of himself to the queen.
Missandei remembers when he had first come out of the darkness beyond Winterfell, cloaked and hooded like a wraith, as though he were the king of night and winter rather than simply the King in the North. In that very moment, the first flames of fury had ignited between the queen and the king. She thinks they had made the first few steps toward a mutual understanding after spending the night together, yet…
She wishes she could speak to her friend, to understand the deepest secrets in her heart. Daenerys has always had a softer heart than she lets on, knowing that her external image as the dragon queen lends itself to stubborn pride and righteous fury. Rarely does anyone see the side of Daenerys that is plagued by uncertainty, by a consuming need to do right by people and be loved by them in return, to want more than she thinks she deserves or is entitled to as a queen.
She had spoken with Arya Stark before the girl had flown south with the queen, but Missandei knows that it is not the same. How can it be? Arya is the sister of the man Daenerys can barely tolerate (even with the reluctant growing affection between the two). The Starks are a political means to an end, after all.
Missandei knows that it was important for her to stay. But the road to Dragonstone has never felt so long.
“Lady Missandei?”
Shaken out of her thoughts, Missandei turns at the sound of her name, starting with some surprise as she sees Bran Stark coming up behind her, pushed along the covered walkway in his wheeled chair by Podrick Payne. The sparring below forgotten, she nods her head respectfully.
“My lord.”
Podrick wheels Bran next to Missandei before pausing, looking at the young man hesitantly. Bran only nods and then Podrick offers Missandei a polite if stuttering farewell before he vanishes around the corner, leaving Missandei and Bran alone atop the walkway.
She is admittedly perplexed. The youngest of the Stark children is an enigma to her. He has rarely appeared in meetings with the lords and seemingly prefers taking his meals in his bedchamber alone (well, somewhat alone—she sees a pretty curly-haired young woman who accompanies him often around the grounds of the castle). The lords never seem to seek him out despite him being the last living legitimate son of Eddard Stark and though she does not doubt that his siblings frequently seek him out, he lives like a shadow within the walls of the castle.
She glances at him now. With his dark hair and dark eyes, he looks very much like his older half-brother, though his expression is less guarded and less strained by duty. Even now, he gives her a faint smile as he peers over the banister, watching the pale light of another grey morning fall on those gathered in the courtyard.
“We’ve never really spoken, have we?” Bran says. When Missandei only shakes her head, the young man’s smile becomes a shade more self-effacing. “That is my fault. I try to keep to myself when I can, but it turns out that it’s not the best way to extend hospitality. I’m glad that you stayed here in Winterfell.”
“I am glad to be able to serve my queen.”
“Yes, but you’ve helped Jon a lot,” Bran remarks, nodding his head in the direction of the courtyard. Missandei follows his gaze and sees that Qhono is adjusting a boy’s drawing arm, the scowl evident on his face from even this distance. “It would have been hard enough getting the northerners to train under a Dothraki warrior and Jaime Lannister. A translator helps with one of them at least.”
Qhono has picked up some of the Common Tongue while he has been here in Winterfell, though his exasperation and annoyance with the green archers he is training often reduces his phrases to “no” and “bad” and “shame” (she knows too that he has picked up “beautiful”, a word that she suspects has kept his bed warm). She has served to translate between him and the king, though she is not sure how helpful it is on days like today when the king is nowhere to be found.
“The queen and the king know that the northerners will need to fight alongside the Dothraki. It makes sense that they become more used to their fighting styles.” It might have helped too to have one of the Unsullied here, but that train of thought only causes the longing in her heart to pierce her throat. “The Dothraki will learn the Westerosi fighting style from the queen’s allies in Highgarden.”
“I hope it’s enough,” Bran murmurs with a grimace. Missandei gives him a quizzical look.
“Your sister hopes to end the southern war without much bloodshed.”
“My concern is the war to the north.” Bran turns away from the courtyard, peering up at her again. Despite the openness of his expression, Missandei cannot help but think there is a shadow in his dark eyes, something ancient and knowing and wary. She does not know what to make of it so she says nothing as the young man continues, “I don’t think Jon and Daenerys were wrong to decide to deal with Cersei first but the real threat is to the north.”
Daenerys had come back from the Wall speaking of the things she’d seen. While there is a part of Missandei that shudders at the horrors, another part of her remembers the stories the Astapori elders once told. The threats hidden in the darkness of the night are of course as old as the memory of man, but for those very nightmares to be pressing against the Wall…
“As long as the Wall stands, it gives the queen and the king time to gather an army, does it not?”
“It does,” Bran agrees slowly, as though his thoughts are still circling in his mind. His mouth presses into a thin contemplative line before he says, “But the strategy to defend the realm depends on the strength of the Wall and the Wall will fall. It’s only a question of when. The ravens keep getting lost in the storms coming down from the Frostfangs so we don’t have frequent information coming from the Night’s Watch. I haven’t been able to see the Shadow Tower for months.”
Missandei doesn’t know why he’s telling her this (and that bit at the end about seeing the Shadow Tower only confuses her). Does he not trust that Daenerys will keep her word and return with her armies? Even after everything she has sworn to Jon? She feels a sting of hurt on behalf of her queen. “Her Grace will return. You should not doubt that.”
“I don’t!” Bran hastens to say. He does have the decency to look embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that I think she wouldn’t. But I wanted to talk to you about Rhaegal.”
“Rhaegal?” Missandei frowns. “I don’t understand.”
“The queen didn’t mean to leave him here in Winterfell. Rhaegal stayed on his own.”
While it’s true that the queen cannot make the dragons do anything they don’t want to do, Missandei isn’t sure why Rhaegal would stay here in the North. It couldn’t be because he was still exhausted from his flight from Dragonstone—after all, Viserion had departed with Drogon. Rhaegal had even initially left with his brothers, returning only an hour or two later as though seeing his family safely to some unknown barrier. He has since continued to set up a den of sorts in the godswood. Is that what concerns Bran? The godswood is sacred ground for the Stark family, she knows. Perhaps having a dragon living within it has insulted them.
But how does he know that the queen hadn’t meant for Rhaegal to stay in the first place? Surely she would not have pulled the youngest Stark son aside to tell him. Could she have told Arya who then told Bran? She ponders her questions for a few more seconds before she says. “If Rhaegal being in the godswood has caused offense…”
“It hasn’t.” Bran’s small smile is reassuring, though even she can’t miss the troubled edge to it. The king has been wary of the dragon’s presence, that much is clear. He had sought Missandei’s advice on how to manage a dragon and had only nodded grimly at her reminder that dragons are wild beasts with minds of their own. More clever than most just like his direwolf, she pointed out, but still wild. “But the fastest way to see what the situation at the Wall is on dragonback.”
Missandei immediately knows what Bran is asking. She shakes her head. “It will not work, my lord.”
“Why not?”
“The dragons are not mere horses anyone can saddle and ride,” she explains quietly. “Daenerys is their mother. They have formed a bond over the years. They trust her and she trusts them.”
The queen has told her the story of how the dragon eggs had been a wedding gift from a man named Illyrio Mopatis. She remembers how the queen said that she drew strength from the stone eggs during the darkest and longest nights of her marriage to Khal Drogo, caring for them as gently and protectively as any mother might. The bond that Daenerys and the three dragons have clearly goes back to long before they were born back into the world.
Missandei continues with a gentle warning in her voice, “I do not believe having any of the northerners approach Rhaegal to subdue him to mount is wise, my lord.”
But Bran only shakes his head.
“Not any of the northerners. Just one in particular.”
Confusion settles within her for only a moment before clarity strikes her like a bolt of lightning. Her eyes widen.
“The king?” When Bran nods, she can only blink at him in astonishment. “My lord, that is…” Dangerous. Ludicrous. Foolish. “...ill-advised.” Bran laughs, though there is little humor in it.
“He’d agree with you,” the young man admits. “But he has a far better chance of bonding with Rhaegal than anyone else. Rhaegal staying here in the godswood already shows that he trusts Jon in some way, I think.”
“Because he is to marry the queen?”
Here, Bran actually does hesitate. Missandei watches several emotions pass through the young lord’s expression, only a few of which she can decipher. Then he sighs, sits back in his chair, and says, “No. It’s complicated.”
Missandei grimaces. The marriage and the queen and king’s relationship are already turbulent enough without adding another complication on top of it. She says, “I do not think it is worth the risk regardless. The dragons can be…temperamental, even with those they bond with. The king is too important to lose simply to find out what is happening at the Wall. I think it is better to be patient and wait for Daenerys to return.”
But even as she says those words, she knows why Bran is broaching the topic with her in the first place. If the Wall is the first line of defense against the army of the dead, then it is imperative to make sure that it is being properly defended. She knows that the king has sent more men north to hold the castles along the Wall, but she also knows that waiting months for news to come down regarding a weakness—or worse, news of the dread armies finally breaching the Wall—is an impossible request.
Letting her gaze drift down to the courtyard, Missandei wonders what she should advise. Yes, she has stayed in Winterfell for this very purpose but there is a part of her that is hesitant to give cautionary counsel that may have disastrous consequences. She is no strategic battle commander—after all, the king has let Ser Jaime Lannister live for that express purpose. What can she possibly advise that is reasonable?
Perhaps strategy is not your strength, my friend, but you are far too perspective in matters of the heart.
Daenerys’s words echo in her memory. How can she advise the king on matters of the heart? The queen and the king are very similar in a lot of ways, but there is still that chasm of difference between the stoic young man and the passionate young woman Missandei loves dearly. They will both do anything for their people, including putting themselves in harm’s way to guarantee their safety. If that’s so, then it is not so much convincing the king of the risk as it is guiding him toward the best path forward.
Bran has been watching her silently as she thinks about her options to proceed and when she glances back at him, he gives a small shrug of his shoulder. “Sansa is only a few days from White Harbor. It’ll be another fortnight before she arrives back in Winterfell.”
“Does that matter?”
“You’ve been wondering what the point of Sansa’s plotting is,” Bran points out and Missandei gives him a sharp look. But the young man’s expression doesn’t flicker. “It’s understandable. Sansa knows the game better than any of us—I’ve been keeping an eye on her while she’s been on Dragonstone. We all need to take some risks in order to survive either war.”
This is too much. “I don’t understand, my lord. You keep speaking of things you know or things you see that you have no way of understanding.”
“I don’t think they have greenseers in Essos, do they?”
A queer question, but Missandei doesn’t answer it right away. A seer. There are supposed prophets in Essos, men and women who claim to see and know the future. She encountered several when she was enslaved by Kraznys mo Nakloz and other Good Masters, though they often spoken in vague riddles that could be interpreted broadly. The followers of the Red God had purported to see future visions of Daenerys as a savior and while Missandei cannot say they were wrong, she thinks Melisandre was right to caution against prophecies.
Eventually she asks, “Do you see the future, my lord?”
“Would that the future be clear enough to see,” Bran responds wistfully, shaking his head. “But no. My gifts allow me to see the past and the present. I’ve been able to keep an eye on the war to the south. I’ve done my best to watch the war to the north but the Night King and I draw our magic from the same source. He can hide from my Sight, cloak the Wall itself in darkness. I wouldn’t ask about Rhaegal if I knew there was another way. Jon does his best with the information I can give him but that information isn’t enough.”
Well.
Missandei is not sure what she expected the young man to say but this certainly isn’t it.
The Starks hold more power than we thought, she thinks faintly. Perhaps not in military strength—they likely wouldn’t have agreed to the desperate alliance with Daenerys otherwise—but the family itself, the children who survived the war, have gifts that can make them either invaluable allies or formidable enemies. It is their good fortune that they have a common enemy in Cersei and the darkness that awaits beyond the Wall, but the news has still taken her aback. There are limits to every act of grace. Both the queen and the king must know that.
But even as she wonders about the implications of Bran’s powers, they are both interrupted by the sound of shouting in the courtyard below. Missandei turns just in time to see Qhono laughingly sidestep a punch thrown by one of the more short-tempered northerners. The wildlings holding their bows at their sides, the ones that the king and the master-at-arms have selected to help in training, hoot and sneer, especially as the crowd of wildlings and northerners grow. Missandei can taste the tension even from the upper level.
Near the edge of the courtyard, she sees one of the senior knights, a Valeman by the looks of it, murmur something to a red-cheeked lad who nods and rushes off. She has no doubt what the message is: find the king.
“I was wondering when this would happen,” Bran says from her side. When she looks back at him, she sees that his eyes again have that ancient dark sheen, archaic knowledge residing in that youthful face, terrible and vast enough to send tiny spiders of ice creeping down her spine. “I know what I’m asking is not ideal and I’m sorry for it. I know it’s too much to ask of him and of you.”
It is too much to ask.
Yet…
And you’ve seen what’s in the night, haven’t you?
Is this her choice to make? She knows in the end, it will be on the king’s shoulders, as a million other things are. She has offered guidance to the queen under similar—if not identical—circumstances. It is not overstepping her role, especially when she has agreed to this, especially when the queen has agreed to give up so much more to unite the strength of the Targaryen and Stark armies.
“I will try to speak with the king,” Missandei reluctantly agrees after a moment. “What he does is his choice though. I will not try to dissuade him from that.”
“I won’t ask you to.” Bran sighs as the shouting below grows louder. “If anything, I just hope it makes it easier for him.”
But even as she walks away, even as she hears Rhaegal’s cry soar over the shouts of men in the courtyard, she wonders if, despite it all, she is somehow betraying Daenerys in the asking. Yes, it may be the king’s choice, but this seems like a grave breach of trust. Even if it aids them in the war to the north, is it worth it to request such a thing of the king?
She is not sure she likes the answer very much.
Arya thinks that Daenerys Targaryen is avoiding her.
As she looks out over the winter storm that has swept in off the Narrow Sea, she thinks back on Missandei’s request of her back in Winterfell. She doubts she and Daenerys will ever be close friends but she does not exactly mind getting to know the queen better—after all, this is the woman who will be Jon’s wife and whom she is killing Cersei for (sort of). With Sansa and the rest of the northerners gone, Daenerys is the only person here on Dragonstone for whom Arya has even a modicum of goodwill.
Arya sighs as she props a hip against the window, staring out at the quickly darkening sky. Watching the cresting waves thrash against the obsidian cliffs, she thinks it would serve to pass the time to learn more about the queen, especially as storms prevent her from traveling southwest toward the capital. After all, as a child, Arya had adored tales of warrior queens like Princess Nymeria or Visenya Targaryen.
Yet the queen has buried herself in meetings with her council, a wraith of flames in the echoing halls of Dragonstone. She has tried to find moments to speak with the other young woman but there are only so many times Daenerys can be too busy before Arya realizes that it is on purpose.
She can’t think of why the queen has taken to keeping her at arm’s length so she watches the members of Daenerys’s council from afar, her gaze cool and judgmental. The queen may trust these men and Sansa may have respected their strategic abilities, but Arya’s grudges are deep-set. She remembers Lord Varys standing on the steps of Baelor when they dragged Father before the crowd of screaming smallfolk. She only vaguely remembers Lord Tyrion from his visit to Winterfell half a lifetime ago and she supposes he earns her begrudging respect for killing Joffrey. Lady Olenna is a mystery and Theon is a shadow of the young man she remembers.
Strangely enough, Arya finds herself often discussing Braavos with Tycho Nestoris, the envoy from the Iron Bank who has been a guest of the queen’s for weeks now. The man had been surprised to find that Arya had lived in the coastal city for years and they often fell into conversations about the islands and the canals, the pirates and the ports, the temples and the courtesans.
(It is manipulation, this easy camaraderie. Arya knows the importance of the Iron Bank’s support of their cause during the war—if this envoy finds a cheerful companion amongst the warring Westerosi factions…well, it is better that she be that companion.)
Still, Arya thinks with a frown, for all of the talking that she’s doing, she’s not speaking with Daenerys. That annoys her. She needs to find out the root cause of this. Gods help them if the queen has already started to regret her alliance with the North.
Footsteps sound behind her. It is nearly impossible to sneak up on Arya anymore, not after her years of training beneath the Faceless Men. In sun and darkness, she hears even shadows whisper. Her fingers, which already never stray from Needle’s hilt, dance along the pommel.
A woman, she judges from the light tread of the steps. There is the swish of multiple layers of fabric and a strange heat that pricks at the back of her neck. She shifts her weight to more easily run or defend herself if need be and then…
“Hello, Arya Stark.”
That voice sounds familiar.
Why does that voice sound familiar?
She turns…and goes cold.
“You.”
The red witch stands behind her, her face as eerily calm as it had been all those years ago when the woman had come upon the Brotherhood in the riverlands. Her robes are still that deep crimson that Arya remembers, the color of spilled blood, the blood that she had needed from Gendry, stealing him away for nothing more than two bags of gold. Though never part of her prayer, Arya had never forgotten or forgiven the priestess for taking away the last remaining member of her fire-forged pack.
“What are you doing here?” Arya demands, though she already knows—and dreads—the answer to the question.
“I am a guest of Daenerys Stormborn,” the witch says, bowing her head respectfully. Her lips tilt upwards in a sad smile. “I knew we would meet again, though I imagined it under different circumstances.”
Arya scowls and reaches for her rage, that fury that burned hot and molten in her heart in those days after Father’s death…and to her surprise finds nothing except cold ash. That same anger that had once engraved names into her memory, into a prayer of revenge, has aged and turned into something broken and wretched over the years. It had been the wrath of a child, flailing violently against the tidal wave of horrendous fate. In its place now is a frigid wariness.
I see a darkness in you…
Arya thinks of the faces she has stolen, the lives she has so easily taken over the years. It is the truth that she has held back from Jon, the enormity of which she can never confess to him. But now she wonders if he knows, at some instinctive level, of the monster that she has become, the demon that the witch had seen in her visions.
She shoves the thought away. “You were with Lord Stannis.”
“Stannis is dead. Your lady knight saw to that.”
Jon had told her some of the story and Sansa had told her the rest, but Arya does not care about Lord Stannis nor his death at Brienne’s hands. The man had been a foreign entity to her, another obstacle on her long journey home. She eyes the witch warily. “You were with Jon and Sansa when they defeated the Boltons. Did your god tell you to do that?”
The woman watches her for a long moment. There is something different about her, a shift in the fanaticism that Arya remembers from all those years ago. It is something sadder, more somber, as if defeat has etched the realities of war into her soul.
“The Lord of Light allowed me to pull your brother from beyond the gates of death,” the witch says. “Beyond that, I have done little except advise the Mother of Dragons to meet the King in the North.”
Both Jon and Sansa had left that very important bit of information out of their stories. Arya frowns. True, she had never exactly asked about the details of Jon’s death and resurrection—the very idea that her brother had been gone and she might not have known for years is too painful to think about—but she had seen Thoros bring Beric Dondarrion back to life. The men had told her of the countless times Thoros had infused the fires of his god into Beric’s heart, for reasons neither man could truly explain to her.
Every time I come back, I’m a bit less. Pieces of you get chopped away.
Arya thinks of Jon, of the stranger she can't know and the tumultuous darkness she often sees in the king’s dark gaze. She tampers down a shudder.
“You brought Jon back,” she says flatly, “but you took Gendry. He was part of my pack. You hurt him.”
“The boy lives,” the witch informs him and at Arya’s expression, a gentle smile touches her lips. “You have a great many friends around you, Arya Stark. It was Ser Davos who freed him.”
But where is he now, Arya wonders, resisting the urge to bite her bottom lip. The Brotherhood had sold Gendry years ago. Even if Ser Davos had freed him, that is no guarantee that Gendry hadn’t been swept up in the wars that continue to plague the realm. She doesn’t even know if the Brotherhood still survives—she has not heard any stories of them roaming the riverlands ever since her return to Westeros. For all she knows, every single last one of them has died. Hot Pie survived but that seems more of a fluke. It is too much to hope that Gendry still lives too.
The witch seems as though she is patiently waiting for another accusation from Arya, but Arya finds that she has none to throw. She does not like the woman even if she did save Jon and she doubts she ever will. She does not like the fact that she is here on Dragonstone but she does not have the authority to make her leave either.
So she only says, “You should stay away from my family.”
The woman only watches her with those fathomless blue eyes for a long moment before she dips her head in a nod. Arya does not think she’s actually agreeing with her.
She’s proven right when the woman says, “There is a great darkness coming from the north. Your brother and the queen are vital in protecting the realms of men from the night and its servants. I will stay with them for as long as I am able.” She tilts her head to the side. “You too will have a part to play in this war, child. Not simply against the queen of lions but against the demon who wields the night and the darkness, the Great Other who threatens your home.”
Prophecies and riddles. Arya feels her jaw clench. It’s all stupid words in the end. “I don’t believe in your god.” If he is as powerful as the woman says, maybe he shouldn’t have let Father and Mother and Robb and Rickon die. A god who demands the blood of innocents to make visions come true is not a god she believes deserves praise. “I don’t believe in any gods.”
“A girl lies,” the witch notes with that same sad smile. “You are a servant of the god you believe in the most. You are a servant of Death—you wear His faces and you wield His weapons in your hands. You would not be here if you did not. It is one of many roles you will play.”
Arya does not like the idea that everything she might do is predestined. She may have stolen this gift from the Faceless Men, used it for her own vengeance and wrath, but if it can only be called fate in hindsight then it is not fate at all. Who she must become to secure her family’s safety, to make sure her home never burns or is lost again—there are no gods who control that. There is no god who has created this bond between her and her siblings, that has created her love for the frozen wilds of the north. Even the Faceless Men could not take that away from her.
“Death is a tool,” she tells the witch, “and I am no servant.”
“And yet even a servant can become a master,” the woman responds. But then she bows her head. “The dragon queen waits for you. I will not keep you.”
The witch’s words echo through Arya’s mind, even as she eventually comes across the door leading to Daenerys’s private chambers. She does not like the idea of being a servant or master over death. She must kill Cersei for the sake of the southern war. Everything else is just stupid, pretty words to make it sound like Arya has a destiny. What she does is strategically sound. Nothing more.
And what would Sansa or Bran think if they thought she was only a servant of Death? What would Jon think?
She grimaces and is about to knock on the door when rushed footsteps behind her cause her to pause and turn. Hurrying down the corridor, pale and solemn, is Dragonstone’s maester. Arya thinks he might have been left over from Stannis’s retinue—Daenerys clearly did not bring him with her from Meereen—and she narrows her eyes as he also pauses at the door. He nods his head respectfully at her before he knocks on the door. The voices beyond quickly hush at the sound of the knock and a moment later, the queen’s voice bids them to enter.
Though the maester is at her heels, Arya is pleased to see that the antechamber only contains Daenerys and Tyrion—she is tired of the queen hiding behind the phalanx of her council. The maester closes the door behind them but before Arya can say anything, the maester has bowed his head low before removing a scrap of paper from his sleeve.
“Your Grace. We received a raven from the Citadel.”
Daenerys and Tyrion are sitting at a table near the massive fireplace in the antechamber, both of them holding goblets of wine (or rather, Tyrion is holding a goblet of wine while Daenerys has absently tipped her empty one onto its base). The pair of them share looks before Daenerys rises and crosses over to the door.
“Not Highgarden?” When the maester shakes his head, the queen’s frown only deepens. “Thank you, Maester Pylos. I will find you if we need to send a raven back with an answer.”
The moment the maester has silently slipped out of the room, Arya draws in a breath to accuse the queen of avoiding her. But before she can speak a single word, Daenerys murmurs something about reading the message in private and then hurries back toward her bedchambers, shutting the door behind her. Arya stares at the closed door and scowls.
When she looks back over at Tyrion, giving him a look as though to blame him for this situation, the dwarf only sighs and kicks out the now empty chair across from him, gesturing for her to take a seat. Arya briefly debates stubbornly marching over to the door of the bedchamber and throwing it open, but eventually relents, skulking instead over to the table. The moment she sits, she says, “Your queen’s been avoiding me. Why?”
“Peculiar question, that.” Tyrion raises an eyebrow at her. “Have you given her reason to?” Arya narrows her eyes.
“I came here to make sure the southern war ends. But the moment Sansa left for Winterfell, your queen has barely spoken more than two words to me.” When Tyrion waves his hand at the pitcher of wine, she shakes her head. She has never cared for wine, even when she wore the faces of those who did. It has always tasted too southern for her palate. “Is she so distracted by the war that she can’t spare a minute for the person who will end it for her?”
Tyrion clears his throat and when Arya shoots him a baleful look, the dwarf is already reaching forward to pour himself more wine. He smiles, his eyes twinkling as though he is in on some joke that Arya has yet to understand.
“Might I offer some counsel? Purely observational, of course—you are free to ignore it.” When Arya makes an impatient gesture, the false mirth dies from Tyrion’s expression. He now only looks exasperated. “In the future, if you wish for the queen to continue speaking to you, perhaps don’t threaten her life.”
Arya blinks.
“What are you on about? When did I threaten her life?”
“She mentioned something about a conversation you two had. Something about not becoming a worse option than your…brother.”
Arya catches the pause and knows immediately that Tyrion realizes who Jon is. She does not think her sister told him which means it must have been Daenerys. On one hand, it is understandable—Tyrion is her Hand. Jon’s potential claim to the throne, as well as the blood relation strengthening the Targaryen claim to power, is a secret that must be shared. Still, it leaves a sour taste in her mouth.
But then she reflects on Tyrion’s other words. She blinks again and then makes a face.
“Seven bloody hells. I was joking.”
“The queen doesn’t seem to think so,” Tyrion points out mildly. When Arya scoffs, the dwarf only hums thoughtfully. “I could be wrong—other than Lady Sansa, it has been some time since I’ve enjoyed the riveting company of House Stark—but your family is not particularly known for its humor. And northerners, by and large, are a dour lot.”
“She’s being paranoid.”
“A little paranoia is considered a tactical advantage in the wisest of rulers.” Tyrion takes a long pull of his wine before he sets the goblet back on the table. “Especially when you are in a war where many people want to kill you already. I’m sure your brother feels the same way.”
He isn’t wrong. Arya had heard the whispers around Winterfell after all. More and more people are starting to believe that the threat beyond the Wall is real, especially after Daenerys, a woman with whom the king blatantly has an embittered relationship with, had come back from the Wall to confirm it. But there are still others who believe the young man to be fearful of false shadows, of planning for a war against creatures of myth and legend and childhood stories.
That doesn’t mean she wants to apologize to Daenerys. She only spares a glance at the door. “Jon’s being stupid about it but I think they actually might work well together. I don’t think he’d allow her to become a worse option than him because that would mean he’d have to rule the realm instead.” Tyrion reaches for his goblet again.
“Well, I recall him being an ambitious young man. You cannot blame the queen for thinking the worst.”
“He’s not,” Arya says. “At least…not anymore.”
“The fact that he’s a king suggests differently.” But he only shakes his head when Arya frowns, prepared to defend her brother. “But it has been seven long years since I last saw him. If there is anything these past several months have taught me, it is that the world can change into something very different from the one you remember in seven years.”
Arya thinks about that for a moment. Then she says, “I met your father once. In Harrenhal.”
That clearly takes the queen’s Hand by surprise. He had been raising his goblet back to his lips when he pauses, his mouth turning downward into a frown. “Oh?”
“I was his cupbearer. He didn’t know who I was.” She pauses. “At least, I don’t think he did.”
Several different emotions pass across Tyrion’s face at her words. She watches as his expression eventually settles on disinterest. “I suspect your journey may have been quite different if he did.” He drinks.
“You killed him.”
“One of my many acclaimed achievements in life, I’ve been told.”
Tywin Lannister had killed Robb and Mother. She knows that as certain as she knows that it had been the Freys and Roose Bolton who had landed the killing blow. Sometimes, if she closes her eyes, she can still see the Stark banners burning in the night. She can hear the screams and smell the blood running thick amongst the spilled ale. She can see Robb’s desecrated corpse, Grey Wind’s head mounted atop her brother’s body, the mockery of his title ringing through the smoke-choked night.
That night, she had not been a she-wolf. And she had not been a she-wolf trapped behind the walls of Harrenhal. If she had, maybe Robb and Mother would still be alive. Rickon, too.
And yet even a servant can become a master.
Too late, Arya thinks as the door to the bedchamber opens. And it will never be enough. I will never give the god of Death enough lives to replace the ones He already took. She turns to face the queen, but her words are lost to the look of barely restrained relief and joy on the queen’s face.
“It’s Ser Jorah. He’s alive. He found a cure and he’s alive and he’s riding for Winterfell.”
“Dinners might be a little more productive if you actually attended them, Your Grace.”
There is a sharp thrum as the string of the longbow is released. The arrow goes flying and hits the distant wooden shield hanging from the large bale of hay, not quite in the center but close enough to make no difference. It is one of over half a dozen arrows already deeply embedded in the shield and, as the king reaches for another arrow in the barrelat his side, it is probably not the last tonight.
Jon notches the arrow, takes aim, and lets the arrow fly toward its intended target before he asks, “Did anyone threaten to kill anyone else?”
“Not tonight.”
“Then I wasn’t needed.”
Davos sighs and wants to tell Jon that this was not the point but the king is already reaching for another arrow. The deep grey cloak of the evening has brought with it a gentle snowfall—not enough to impede sight, surely, but enough to keep the courtyard deserted at this hour. Still, Davos does not miss the way a few of Winterfell’s residents pass through the cloisters embracing the courtyard, pausing as they watch their king fire arrows at his target with unerring accuracy. In his boiled leathers and with a crown of snowflakes already dusting his dark hair, Davos does not have to guess at the image the King in the North presents to his subjects.
Still, he does not move away to find warmer shelter, only watching silently as Jon fires two more arrows. His presence must become too insistent to ignore after a while because Jon lets out a sigh, his breath misting in front of his face from the frigid air. He lowers the longbow and turns his dark gaze to Davos before saying, “Out with it.”
“I said that no one threatened to kill anyone tonight,” Davos repeats as he tucks his hands behind his back. “I can’t say anything about yesterday night or tomorrow night. These stiff-necked bastards don’t like Ser Jaime and they’re not afraid to let him know it.”
But Jon only rubs his face tiredly.
“I can’t constantly chaperone the lords, Davos,” the king says quietly. “If the men only tolerate Ser Jaime while I’m around, then how the hell am I supposed to trust that they’ll listen to him when the real war comes and I need to be elsewhere? I can’t shadow his every movement and I can’t play peacekeeper every waking moment. I trust that you’ll keep them from murdering each other when I can’t be there, but they need to learn to trust one another.”
“That’s a big ask, Your Grace.” Davos watches as Jon picks up another arrow, notches it, but does not aim it. “Northerners aren’t known to forget slights, big or small. What’s that saying you all are fond of? The North remembers, isn’t it? Too many of them lost friends and family fighting the Lannisters.”
“I know,” Jon replies. He still does not lift the longbow, though his eyes remain fixed on the target. He seems lost in thought, the fatigue that has followed him like a persistent lover hanging over him like a noose. Davos can see the black exhaustion in Jon’s eyes, can sense the weariness hanging off him despite the mask of strength he wears around his people. “But I can’t change the past. None of that matters. Not anymore.”
Davos knows that Jon had hoped it might be easier to convince the northerners of the logic behind these alliances, especially after declaring the marriage pact between himself and Daenerys Targaryen. But allowing Jaime Lannister to live, to take him on as a military advisor for the northern war (no one is pretending that Ser Jaime will help them fight his sister and former lover) has apparently been too much.
Though they have received a raven from Wyman Manderly that mentioned the ships bearing Sansa Stark and the caches of dragonglass are less than a week out from White Harbor, the tension within Winterfell has only grown. Davos thinks that the only good thing is that there is no tension involving the presence of the queen’s lingering dragon.
Still, he can see that the weight of the responsibility and of the impending dangers is starting to cause cracks to appear in Jon’s usually implacable facade. His tongue is sharper, his patience shorter, and there are too many times when Davos thinks that the king is not at all paying attention to what is happening around him. Once, after a particularly vicious meeting in the Great Hall, Davos had come across Jon in his office, the king breathing harshly through what Davos might have called panic. Though Jon had brushed him off, Davos cannot quite erase the image of the young man, his head bowed and his eyes squeezed shut, trembling violently from something fiercer than the cold.
He wishes that the queen had stayed for a few weeks longer. At least, he thinks, the poor lad could have at least gotten some sleep.
“I’m not arguing with you,” Davos says, rocking back on his heels. “But there has to be a different way of getting the northerners used to Ser Jaime’s presence.”
Jon’s shoulders only slump though. Davos watches as he reaches into a pocket to pull out a tiny scroll, his expression troubled and weary as he hands it to Davos. Frowning, Davos takes the tiny scrap of paper and begins to unfurl it.
“We received a raven from Deepwood Motte a few hours ago,” Jon says as Davos slowly reads the message. “This morning, we received a similar message from Lady Mormont.”
But Davos barely hears the king. Alarm thunders through his head like a war drum.
“Wights?” he asks, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. “But how? The Wall hasn’t fallen, has it? Your brother would know that at least, wouldn’t he?”
Jon’s expression is grim, but he shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think the Wall’s fallen.” When Davos only blinks at him, perplexed, Jon continues, “When I was in the Watch, we found the bodies of two brothers beyond the Wall. We brought them back to Castle Black for Maester Aemon to examine. We didn’t know they were already wights. One of them tried to kill Lord Commander Mormont. I burned it before it could.”
Shit. Davos looks back down at the message. “I thought the Wall stops the Night King’s magic.”
“He can’t raise any of the dead south of the Wall,” Jon says, looking back toward his target. He has not raised his longbow again. “Not while he’s still north of it. We’d be fucked if he could.”
Davos does not doubt it. The recent war has taken its toll on the realm. He knows that the wildlings burn their dead, but who knows how many countless unburied corpses litter the realm from the Wall to Dorne. If the Night King can use his magic to draw the dead from manmade tombs and from earthen graves and from the watery deeps…the nightmare is too catastrophic to even consider.
“They couldn’t climb it, could they?”
“Even the wildlings had trouble with it when the Watch was defending it. And that was with tools only the living would use.”
“Then how’d wights get south of the Wall?”
Jon is quiet for several moments. Then he says, “Lyanna Mormont sent us another message a couple of weeks ago. She said that sentries on Bear Island had seen Greyjoy ships sailing north into the Bay of Ice. If they passed the Wall, Bran wouldn’t have been able to see them. Denys Mallister already sent a raven saying that the White Walkers were in Westwatch and that wights were in the Gorge.”
When Davos doesn’t say anything—hells, what can he say to this kind of news?—Jon lifts his longbow again.
“I’ve sent ravens to Karhold and Last Hearth so that Alys and Ned know that wights are coming south of the Wall. I’ve sent ravens to Edd and Daenerys too.” Jon lets loose his arrow but this time the arrow goes wide, off the mark. The king doesn’t even seem to notice as he blindly reaches for another shaft. “If Bran can’t see the wights either and the Night King keeps sending them south…”
“The wights don’t think though,” Davos reminds him. “They’re just mindless fodder.”
Yet his words don’t seem to soothe the king.
“The wights that we brought to Castle Black…I was able to burn the one before it killed the Old Bear. But the other killed five brothers before they were able to stop it.” Jon’s voice goes quiet. “He’s been building his strength for thousands of years, Davos. We lost most of the remaining strength of the Night’s Watch at the Fist of the First Men. We lost thousands of wildlings at Hardhome. The Night King could send ten thousand wights south of the Wall and it could be a fraction of his strength.” Davos frowns.
“Will he?”
“I don’t know.” A distracted look passes through Jon’s eyes. “Bran told me the Night King used to be a man. He could try to take the Wall by sheer force, but he’s been waiting. Everything he’s done requires patience. He’s been smart about his attacks.”
The more Davos hears about the Night King, the less he wants to ask. He thinks it is enough to know the demonic power that the Others possess, the ability to bring the cold and the night and the living dead themselves to heel. But if Jon is speaking truthfully, there is a cunning and strategic mind behind this indomitable supernatural force, a mind that cannot be reasoned with, a mind that is too warped and cruel to be considered anything except monstrous. It is not like dealing with Cersei Lannister or Ramsay Bolton or Euron Greyjoy or any of the mortal lords of the realm.
And he’s not entirely sure what advice he can give to Jon for that.
Well…except maybe one thing.
He reaches out to wrap the fingers of his non-maimed hand around the longbow, lowering it so that the noticed arrow points to the ground. To his relief, Jon doesn’t resist much, though his focus never wavers away from the target.
“Shit’s going to happen whether you sleep or not, Your Grace,” Davos chides paternally. “So you might as well sleep. Every single fucking problem you have tonight will be there in the morning. If you really need some motivation, you’ll probably have more problems in the morning.”
Jon’s face twitches in what might have aspired to be a smile in another life.
“I’d rather deal with those problems than sleep,” he replies absently before slipping the longbow out of Davos’s grip. As he takes aim again, Davos finds himself perplexed by the king’s words.
It hits him a moment later.
He doesn’t know why he has never considered that it is nightmares that make the king keep long hours, that make him avoid his bed like some pox-ridden plague. In hindsight, it should have been the first thing he considered rather than assuming Jon was working himself to death out of a stubborn sense of duty. Yes, that’s there too but there had always been a reasonableness to that dutiful honor in the past. But ever since the battle beneath Winterfell’s walls against the Boltons—hells, ever since Melisandre had dragged the young man from the abyss of death…
I did what I thought was right. And I got murdered for it.
I failed.
There has been a lingering brittle edge to Jon. He hides it well for the most part, but if the nightmares are bad enough to keep him from even attempting to sleep during times when he mentally needs to be at full capacity, Davos thinks that maybe he isn’t dealing with it nearly as well as any of them thought.
But he rested when the queen was here, Davos thinks. For one night at least.
There is only one other person in the world who shares a similar experience to Jon and it is their good fortune that this person is Daenerys Targaryen. Despite their constant bickering, there is no denying that the two of them have far more in common than either one of them will admit. The queen at least seemed stubborn enough not to let Jon’s aloofness scare her away. In fact, it had only seemed to cause her to plant her heels even farther into the ground. And truth be told, it makes Davos like the lass even more.
If there is a way out of this, Davos thinks that Sansa Stark had the right of it to force these two into a marriage alliance. If the dragons are fire made flesh, they are an equal force to the cold winds of darkness that the Night King brings. It makes sense that a pact of ice and fire, of Stark and Targaryen, would be just as unstoppable.
It doesn’t change the fact that the dragon queen isn’t here now though.
“What do you want to do about it then?” Davos asks as Jon reaches for another arrow, only to find the barrel empty. The young man sighs and drops the end of the longbow into the snow at his feet. The torchlight casts strange dancing shadows across his face.
“I don’t think Cersei Lannister is planning on allying herself with the Night King,” Jon mutters blandly, “so I guess I’ll find some comfort in that.” Davos snorts.
“Wouldn’t put it past her if she thought it would help her win.” And we would be fucked if she did.
Yet Jon’s brow furrows in though, enough for Davos to realize that he has found something to grasp onto his words.
“What about Euron?”
“Euron Greyjoy?” At Jon’s nod, Davos crosses his arms, racking his memory for all that he knows of the former Greyjoy exile. “The man’s a pirate, and a damned cruel one at that. I heard stories about him when I served Stannis. He’s not the sort of man you reason with. In anyone else, that sort of depravity might be considered madness but he revels in it. And aye, he’s traveled far enough that it’s likely he has picked up tales of the White Walkers.”
“Enough to risk sailing north and bringing the dead south?”
“Not sure,” Davos replies with a shrug. “I’ve seen desperation make people do stranger things.”
The king’s frown only deepens. He starts to walk toward the battered shield attached to the bale of hay and Davos follows him. As Jon begins pulling the arrows out of the wood, Davos asks, “It’s not evenly matched though. The southern war is still in our favor. If your sister can quickly end it, then we’ll have more forces here in the north to deal with the dead.”
It doesn’t seem to comfort Jon though. He yanks out three more arrows before he answers.
“Aye, but the realm is still too divided. Daenerys’s armies with the North might be able to create a line of defense but if all we’re shielding from is infighting to the south of us…no. We need more of the south with us.”
“If the lords in the south haven’t declared for Cersei or Daenerys, I doubt they’ll declare for anyone at this point.”
Jon falls silent again. Davos is not sure if he should leave the king to his thoughts or try again to persuade him to at least get something hot to eat if he refuses to sleep. The snow is starting to fall a little harder and he wonders, if the messages from Lyanna Mormont and Robett Glover are true, whether or not dozens of dead men will lurch out of the night to lay waste to the winter town, to climb the walls of Winterfell. It is not a pleasant thought.
Eventually, Jon pulls the last of the arrows out of the shield, walking back to the barrel to drop them in. Davos follows and to his relief, Jon doesn’t pick up the longbow again. Instead, that same distracted look stays in his eyes, as though he is trying to wrangle a strategic plan together out of nothing more than the thin gossamer-like snowflakes melting in his hair.
“Maybe we just haven’t been asking with the right people,” the king finally says. When Davos only gives him a quizzical look, Jon presses his mouth into a grim line. “The lords have heard what Cersei did to the Tyrells. Many of them still remember the Mad King. And to anyone south of the Neck, I’m just some upstart bastard and a Watch deserter. Maybe some of Daenerys’s allies could convince them otherwise, but she doesn’t have anyone with enough political capital to sway fighting men away to join us.”
“Not to state the obvious, but if she doesn’t, neither do you.”
“Yes, I do." Jon closes his eyes. Davos has never seen him look so tired. "I just have to hope the northerners don’t kill him first.”