Jon prowled around Satin in a slow circle, sword in hand,
forcing him to turn. “Get your shield up,” he said.
“It’s too heavy,” the Oldtown boy complained.
“It’s as heavy as it needs to be to stop a
sword,” Jon said. “Now get it up.” He stepped
forward, slashing. Satin jerked the shield up in time to catch the
sword on its rim, and swung his own blade at Jon’s ribs.
“Good,” Jon said, when he felt the impact on his own
shield. “That was good. But you need to put your body into
it. Get your weight behind the steel and you’ll do more
damage than with arm strength alone. Come, try it again, drive at
me, but keep the shield up or I’ll ring your head like a
bell . . . ”
Instead Satin took a step backward and raised his visor.
“Jon,” he said, in an anxious voice.
When he turned, she was standing behind him, with half a dozen
queen’s men around her. Small wonder the yard grew so quiet.
He had glimpsed Melisandre at her nightfires, and coming and going
about the castle, but never so close. She’s beautiful, he
thought . . . but there was something more than
a little unsettling about red eyes. “My lady.”
“The king would speak with you, Jon Snow.”
Jon thrust the practice sword into the earth. “Might I be
allowed to change? I am in no fit state to stand before a
king.”
“We shall await you atop the Wall,” said Melisandre.
We, Jon heard, not he. It’s as they say. This is his true
queen, not the one he left at Eastwatch.
He hung his mail and plate inside the armory, returned to his
own cell, discarded his sweat-stained clothes, and donned a fresh
set of blacks. It would be cold and windy in the cage, he knew, and
colder and windier still on top of the ice, so he chose a heavy
hooded cloak. Last of all he collected Longclaw, and slung the
bastard sword across his back.
Melisandre was waiting for him at the base of the Wall. She had
sent her queen’s men away. “What does His Grace want of
me?” Jon asked her as they entered the cage.
“All you have to give, Jon Snow. He is a king.”
He shut the door and pulled the bell cord. The winch began to
turn. They rose. The day was bright and the Wall was weeping, long
fingers of water trickling down its face and glinting in the sun.
In the close confines of the iron cage, he was acutely aware of the
red woman’s presence. She even smells red. The scent reminded
him of Mikken’s forge, of the way iron smelled when red-hot;
the scent was smoke and blood. Kissed by fire, he thought,
remembering Ygritte. The wind got in amongst Melisandre’s
long red robes and sent them flapping against Jon’s legs as
he stood beside her. “You are not cold, my lady?” he
asked her.
She laughed. “Never.” The ruby at her throat seemed
to pulse, in time with the beating of her heart. “The
Lord’s fire lives within me, Jon Snow. Feel.” She put
her hand on his cheek, and held it there while he felt how warm she
was. “That is how life should feel,” she told him.
“Only death is cold.”
They found Stannis Baratheon standing alone at the edge of the
Wall, brooding over the field where he had won his battle, and the
great green forest beyond. He was dressed in the same black
breeches, tunic, and boots that a brother of the Night’s
Watch might wear. Only his cloak set him apart; a heavy golden
cloak trimmed in black fur, and pinned with a brooch in the shape
of a flaming heart. “I have brought you the Bastard of
Winterfell, Your Grace,” said Melisandre.
Stannis turned to study him. Beneath his heavy brow were eyes
like bottomless blue pools. His hollow cheeks and strong jaw were
covered with a short-cropped blue-black beard that did little to
conceal the gauntness of his face, and his teeth were clenched. His
neck and shoulders were clenched as well, and his right hand. Jon
found himself remembering something Donal Noye once said about the
Baratheon brothers. Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure
iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the way iron gets.
He’ll break before he bends. Uneasily, he knelt, wondering
why this brittle king had need of him.
“Rise. I have heard much and more of you, Lord
Snow.”
“I am no lord, sire.” Jon rose. “I know what
you have heard. That I am a turncloak, and craven. That I slew my
brother Qhorin Halfhand so the wildlings would spare my life. That
I rode with Mance Rayder, and took a wildling wife.”
“Aye. All that, and more. You are a warg too, they say, a
skinchanger who walks at night as a wolf.” King Stannis had a
hard smile. “How much of it is true?”
“I had a direwolf, Ghost. I left him when I climbed the
Wall near Greyguard, and have not seen him since. Qhorin Halfhand
commanded me to join the wildlings. He knew they would make me kill
him to prove myself, and told me to do whatever they asked of me.
The woman was named Ygritte. I broke my vows with her, but I swear
to you on my father’s name that I never turned my
cloak.”
“I believe you,” the king said.
That startled him. “Why?”
Stannis snorted. “I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark
as well. Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would
doubt his honor or his honesty. You have his look.” A big
man, Stannis Baratheon towered over Jon, but he was so gaunt that
he looked ten years older than he was. “I know more than you
might think, Jon Snow. I know it was you who found the dragonglass
dagger that Randyll Tarly’s son used to slay the
Other.”
“Ghost found it. The blade was wrapped in a ranger’s
cloak and buried beneath the Fist of the First Men. There were
other blades as well . . . spearheads,
arrowheads, all dragonglass.”
“I know you held the gate here,” King Stannis said.
“If not, I would have come too late.”
“Donal Noye held the gate. He died below in the tunnel,
fighting the king of the giants.”
Stannis grimaced. “Noye made my first sword for me, and
Robert’s warhammer as well. Had the god seen fit to spare
him, he would have made a better Lord Commander for your order than
any of these fools who are squabbling over it now.”
“Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister are no fools,
sire,” Jon said. “They’re good men, and capable.
Othell Yarwyck as well, in his own way. Lord Mormont trusted each
of them.”
“Your Lord Mormont trusted too easily. Else he would not
have died as he did. But we were speaking of you. I have not
forgotten that it was you who brought us this magic horn, and
captured Mance Rayder’s wife and son.”
“Dalla died.” Jon was saddened by that still.
“Val is her sister. She and the babe did not require much
capturing, Your Grace. You had put the wildlings to flight, and
the skinchanger Mance had left to guard his queen went mad when the
eagle burned.” Jon looked at Melisandre. “Some say that
was your doing.”
She smiled, her long copper hair tumbling across her face.
“The Lord of Light has fiery talons, Jon Snow.”
Jon nodded, and turned back to the king. “Your Grace, you
spoke of Val. She has asked to see Mance Rayder, to bring his son
to him. It would be a . . . a
kindness.”
“The man is a deserter from your order. Your brothers are
all insisting on his death. Why should I do him a
kindness?”
Jon had no answer for that. “If not for him, for Val. For
her sister’s sake, the child’s mother.”
“You are fond of this Val?”
“I scarcely know her.”
“They tell me she is comely.”
“Very,” Jon admitted.
“Beauty can be treacherous. My brother learned that lesson
from Cersei Lannister. She murdered him, do not doubt it. Your
father and Jon Arryn as well.” He scowled. “You rode
with these wildlings. Is there any honor in them, do you
think?”
“Yes,” Jon said, “but their own sort of honor,
sire.”
“In Mance Rayder?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“In the Lord of Bones?”
Jon hesitated. “Rattleshirt, we called him. Treacherous
and bloodthirsty. If there’s honor in him, he hides it down
beneath his suit of bones.”
“And this other man, this Tormund of the many names who
eluded us after the battle? Answer me truly.”
“Tormund Giantsbane seemed to me the sort of man who would
make a good friend and a bad enemy, Your Grace.”
Stannis gave a curt nod. “Your father was a man of honor.
He was no friend to me, but I saw his worth. Your brother was a
rebel and a traitor who meant to steal half my kingdom, but no man
can question his courage. What of you?” Does he want me to say I love him? Jon’s voice was stiff
and formal as he said, “I am a man of the Night’s
Watch.”
“Words. Words are wind. Why do you think I abandoned
Dragonstone and sailed to the Wall, Lord Snow?”
“I am no lord, sire. You came because we sent for you, I
hope. Though I could not say why you took so long about
it.”
Surprisingly, Stannis smiled at that. “You’re bold
enough to be a Stark. Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my
Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of
humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think
of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I
was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should
have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.”
Stannis pointed north. “There is where I’ll find the
foe that I was born to fight.”
“His name may not be spoken,” Melisandre added
softly. “He is the God of Night and Terror, Jon Snow, and
these shapes in the snow are his creatures.”
“They tell me that you slew one of these walking corpses
to save Lord Mormont’s life,” Stannis said. “it
may be that this is your war as well, Lord Snow. If you will give
me your help.”
“My sword is pledged to the Night’s Watch, Your
Grace,” Jon Snow answered carefully.
That did not please the king. Stannis ground his teeth and said,
“I need more than a sword from you.”
Jon was lost. “My lord?”
“I need the north.” The north. “I . . . my brother Robb
was King in the North . . . ”
“Your brother was the rightful Lord of Winterfell. If he
had stayed home and done his duty, instead of crowning himself and
riding off to conquer the riverlands, he might be alive today. Be
that as it may. You are not Robb, no more than I am
Robert.”
The harsh words had blown away whatever sympathy Jon might have
had for Stannis. “I loved my brother,” he said.
“And I mine. Yet they were what they were, and so are we.
I am the only true king in Westeros, north or south. And you are
Ned Stark’s bastard.” Stannis studied him with those
dark blue eyes. “Tywin Lannister has named Roose Bolton his
Warden of the North, to reward him for betraying your brother. The
ironmen are fighting amongst themselves since Balon Greyjoy’s
death, yet they still hold Moat Cailin, Deepwood Motte,
Torrhen’s Square, and most of the Stony Shore. Your
father’s lands are bleeding, and I have neither the strength
nor the time to stanch the wounds. What is needed is a Lord of
Winterfell. A loyal Lord of Winterfell.” He is looking at me, Jon thought, stunned. “Winterfell is
no more. Theon Greyjoy put it to the torch.”
“Granite does not burn easily,” Stannis said.
“The castle can be rebuilt, in time. It’s not the walls
that make a lord, it’s the man, Your northmen do not know me,
have no reason to love me, yet I will need their strength in the
battles yet to come. I need a son of Eddard Stark to win them to my
banner.” He would make me Lord of Winterfell. The wind was gusting, and
Jon felt so light-headed he was half afraid it would blow him off
the Wall. “Your Grace,” he said, “you forget. I
am a Snow, not a Stark.”
“It’s you who are forgetting,” King Stannis
replied.
Melisandre put a warm hand on Jon’s arm. “A king can
remove the taint of bastardy with a stroke, Lord Snow.” Lord Snow. Ser Alliser Thorne had named him that, to mock his
bastard birth. Many of his brothers had taken to using it as well,
some with affection, others to wound. But suddenly it had a
different sound to it in Jon’s ears. It
sounded . . . real. “Yes,” he said,
hesitantly, “kings have legitimized bastards before,
but . . . I am still a brother of the
Night’s Watch. I knelt before a heart tree and swore to hold
no lands and father no children.”
“Jon.” Melisandre was so close he could feel the
warmth of her breath. “R’hllor is the only true god. A
vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes.
Open your heart and let the light of the Lord come in. Burn these
weirwoods, and accept Winterfell as a gift of the Lord of
Light.”
When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it
meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of
those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to
Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa
and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he were
betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never
wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and
the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of
them . . . I never wanted any harm to come to
any of them, but it did. And now there’s only me. All he had
to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a
Snow. All he had to do was pledge this king his fealty, and
Winterfell was his. All he had to do . . .
. . . was forswear his vows again. And this time it would not be a ruse. To claim his
father’s castle, he must turn against his father’s
gods.
King Stannis gazed off north again, his gold cloak streaming
from his shoulders. “It may be that I am mistaken in you, Jon
Snow. We both know the things that are said of bastards. You may
lack your father’s honor, or your brother’s skill in
arms. But you are the weapon the Lord has given me. I have found
you here, as you found the cache of dragonglass beneath the Fist,
and I mean to make use of you. Even Azor Ahai did not win his war
alone. I killed a thousand wildlings, took another thousand
captive, and scattered the rest, but we both know they will return.
Melisandre has seen that in her fires. This Tormund Thunderfist is
likely re-forming them even now, and planning some new assault. And
the more we bleed each other, the weaker we shall all be when the
real enemy falls upon us.”
Jon had come to that same realization. “As you say, Your
Grace.” He wondered where this king was going.
“Whilst your brothers have been struggling to decide who
shall lead them, I have been speaking with this Mance
Rayder.” He ground his teeth. “A stubborn man, that
one, and prideful. He will leave me no choice but to give him to
the flames. But we took other captives as well, other leaders. The
one who calls himself the Lord of Bones, some of their clan chiefs,
the new Magnar of Thenn. Your brothers will not like it, no more
than your father’s lords, but I mean to allow the wildlings
through the Wall . . . those who will swear me
their fealty, pledge to keep the king’s peace and the
king’s laws, and take the Lord of Light as their god. Even
the giants, if those great knees of theirs can bend. I will settle
them on the Gift, once I have wrested it away from your new Lord
Commander. When the cold winds rise, we shall live or die together.
It is time we made alliance against our common foe.” He
looked at Jon. “Would you agree?”
“My father dreamed of resettling the Gift,” Jon
admitted. “He and my uncle Benjen used to talk of it.”
He never thought of settling it with wildlings,
though . . . but he never rode with wildlings,
either. He did not fool himself; the free folk would make for
unruly subjects and dangerous neighbors. Yet when he weighed
Ygritte’s red hair against the cold blue eyes of the wights,
the choice was easy. “I agree.”
“Good,” King Stannis said, “for the surest way
to seal a new alliance is with a marriage. I mean to wed my Lord of
Winterfell to this wildling princess.”
Perhaps Jon had ridden with the free folk too long; he could not
help but laugh. “Your Grace,” he said, “captive
or no, if you think you can just give Val to me, I fear you have a
deal to learn about wildling women. Whoever weds her had best be
prepared to climb in her tower window and carry her off at
swordpoint . . . ”
“Whoever?” Stannis gave him a measuring look.
“Does this mean you will not wed the girl? I warn you, she is
part of the price you must pay, if you want your father’s
name and your father’s castle. This match is necessary, to
help assure the loyalty of our new subjects. Are you refusing me,
Jon Snow?”
“No,” Jon said, too quickly. It was Winterfell the
king was speaking of, and Winterfell was not to be lightly refused.
“I mean . . . this has all come very
suddenly, Your Grace. Might I beg you for some time to
consider?”
“As you wish. But consider quickly. I am not a patient
man, as your black brothers are about to discover.” Stannis
put a thin, fleshless hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Say
nothing of what we’ve discussed here today. To anyone. But
when you return, you need only bend your knee, lay your sword at my
feet, and pledge yourself to my service, and you shall rise again
as Jon Stark, the Lord of Winterfell.”
Jon prowled around Satin in a slow circle, sword in hand,
forcing him to turn. “Get your shield up,” he said.
“It’s too heavy,” the Oldtown boy complained.
“It’s as heavy as it needs to be to stop a
sword,” Jon said. “Now get it up.” He stepped
forward, slashing. Satin jerked the shield up in time to catch the
sword on its rim, and swung his own blade at Jon’s ribs.
“Good,” Jon said, when he felt the impact on his own
shield. “That was good. But you need to put your body into
it. Get your weight behind the steel and you’ll do more
damage than with arm strength alone. Come, try it again, drive at
me, but keep the shield up or I’ll ring your head like a
bell . . . ”
Instead Satin took a step backward and raised his visor.
“Jon,” he said, in an anxious voice.
When he turned, she was standing behind him, with half a dozen
queen’s men around her. Small wonder the yard grew so quiet.
He had glimpsed Melisandre at her nightfires, and coming and going
about the castle, but never so close. She’s beautiful, he
thought . . . but there was something more than
a little unsettling about red eyes. “My lady.”
“The king would speak with you, Jon Snow.”
Jon thrust the practice sword into the earth. “Might I be
allowed to change? I am in no fit state to stand before a
king.”
“We shall await you atop the Wall,” said Melisandre.
We, Jon heard, not he. It’s as they say. This is his true
queen, not the one he left at Eastwatch.
He hung his mail and plate inside the armory, returned to his
own cell, discarded his sweat-stained clothes, and donned a fresh
set of blacks. It would be cold and windy in the cage, he knew, and
colder and windier still on top of the ice, so he chose a heavy
hooded cloak. Last of all he collected Longclaw, and slung the
bastard sword across his back.
Melisandre was waiting for him at the base of the Wall. She had
sent her queen’s men away. “What does His Grace want of
me?” Jon asked her as they entered the cage.
“All you have to give, Jon Snow. He is a king.”
He shut the door and pulled the bell cord. The winch began to
turn. They rose. The day was bright and the Wall was weeping, long
fingers of water trickling down its face and glinting in the sun.
In the close confines of the iron cage, he was acutely aware of the
red woman’s presence. She even smells red. The scent reminded
him of Mikken’s forge, of the way iron smelled when red-hot;
the scent was smoke and blood. Kissed by fire, he thought,
remembering Ygritte. The wind got in amongst Melisandre’s
long red robes and sent them flapping against Jon’s legs as
he stood beside her. “You are not cold, my lady?” he
asked her.
She laughed. “Never.” The ruby at her throat seemed
to pulse, in time with the beating of her heart. “The
Lord’s fire lives within me, Jon Snow. Feel.” She put
her hand on his cheek, and held it there while he felt how warm she
was. “That is how life should feel,” she told him.
“Only death is cold.”
They found Stannis Baratheon standing alone at the edge of the
Wall, brooding over the field where he had won his battle, and the
great green forest beyond. He was dressed in the same black
breeches, tunic, and boots that a brother of the Night’s
Watch might wear. Only his cloak set him apart; a heavy golden
cloak trimmed in black fur, and pinned with a brooch in the shape
of a flaming heart. “I have brought you the Bastard of
Winterfell, Your Grace,” said Melisandre.
Stannis turned to study him. Beneath his heavy brow were eyes
like bottomless blue pools. His hollow cheeks and strong jaw were
covered with a short-cropped blue-black beard that did little to
conceal the gauntness of his face, and his teeth were clenched. His
neck and shoulders were clenched as well, and his right hand. Jon
found himself remembering something Donal Noye once said about the
Baratheon brothers. Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure
iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the way iron gets.
He’ll break before he bends. Uneasily, he knelt, wondering
why this brittle king had need of him.
“Rise. I have heard much and more of you, Lord
Snow.”
“I am no lord, sire.” Jon rose. “I know what
you have heard. That I am a turncloak, and craven. That I slew my
brother Qhorin Halfhand so the wildlings would spare my life. That
I rode with Mance Rayder, and took a wildling wife.”
“Aye. All that, and more. You are a warg too, they say, a
skinchanger who walks at night as a wolf.” King Stannis had a
hard smile. “How much of it is true?”
“I had a direwolf, Ghost. I left him when I climbed the
Wall near Greyguard, and have not seen him since. Qhorin Halfhand
commanded me to join the wildlings. He knew they would make me kill
him to prove myself, and told me to do whatever they asked of me.
The woman was named Ygritte. I broke my vows with her, but I swear
to you on my father’s name that I never turned my
cloak.”
“I believe you,” the king said.
That startled him. “Why?”
Stannis snorted. “I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark
as well. Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would
doubt his honor or his honesty. You have his look.” A big
man, Stannis Baratheon towered over Jon, but he was so gaunt that
he looked ten years older than he was. “I know more than you
might think, Jon Snow. I know it was you who found the dragonglass
dagger that Randyll Tarly’s son used to slay the
Other.”
“Ghost found it. The blade was wrapped in a ranger’s
cloak and buried beneath the Fist of the First Men. There were
other blades as well . . . spearheads,
arrowheads, all dragonglass.”
“I know you held the gate here,” King Stannis said.
“If not, I would have come too late.”
“Donal Noye held the gate. He died below in the tunnel,
fighting the king of the giants.”
Stannis grimaced. “Noye made my first sword for me, and
Robert’s warhammer as well. Had the god seen fit to spare
him, he would have made a better Lord Commander for your order than
any of these fools who are squabbling over it now.”
“Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister are no fools,
sire,” Jon said. “They’re good men, and capable.
Othell Yarwyck as well, in his own way. Lord Mormont trusted each
of them.”
“Your Lord Mormont trusted too easily. Else he would not
have died as he did. But we were speaking of you. I have not
forgotten that it was you who brought us this magic horn, and
captured Mance Rayder’s wife and son.”
“Dalla died.” Jon was saddened by that still.
“Val is her sister. She and the babe did not require much
capturing, Your Grace. You had put the wildlings to flight, and
the skinchanger Mance had left to guard his queen went mad when the
eagle burned.” Jon looked at Melisandre. “Some say that
was your doing.”
She smiled, her long copper hair tumbling across her face.
“The Lord of Light has fiery talons, Jon Snow.”
Jon nodded, and turned back to the king. “Your Grace, you
spoke of Val. She has asked to see Mance Rayder, to bring his son
to him. It would be a . . . a
kindness.”
“The man is a deserter from your order. Your brothers are
all insisting on his death. Why should I do him a
kindness?”
Jon had no answer for that. “If not for him, for Val. For
her sister’s sake, the child’s mother.”
“You are fond of this Val?”
“I scarcely know her.”
“They tell me she is comely.”
“Very,” Jon admitted.
“Beauty can be treacherous. My brother learned that lesson
from Cersei Lannister. She murdered him, do not doubt it. Your
father and Jon Arryn as well.” He scowled. “You rode
with these wildlings. Is there any honor in them, do you
think?”
“Yes,” Jon said, “but their own sort of honor,
sire.”
“In Mance Rayder?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“In the Lord of Bones?”
Jon hesitated. “Rattleshirt, we called him. Treacherous
and bloodthirsty. If there’s honor in him, he hides it down
beneath his suit of bones.”
“And this other man, this Tormund of the many names who
eluded us after the battle? Answer me truly.”
“Tormund Giantsbane seemed to me the sort of man who would
make a good friend and a bad enemy, Your Grace.”
Stannis gave a curt nod. “Your father was a man of honor.
He was no friend to me, but I saw his worth. Your brother was a
rebel and a traitor who meant to steal half my kingdom, but no man
can question his courage. What of you?” Does he want me to say I love him? Jon’s voice was stiff
and formal as he said, “I am a man of the Night’s
Watch.”
“Words. Words are wind. Why do you think I abandoned
Dragonstone and sailed to the Wall, Lord Snow?”
“I am no lord, sire. You came because we sent for you, I
hope. Though I could not say why you took so long about
it.”
Surprisingly, Stannis smiled at that. “You’re bold
enough to be a Stark. Yes, I should have come sooner. If not for my
Hand, I might not have come at all. Lord Seaworth is a man of
humble birth, but he reminded me of my duty, when all I could think
of was my rights. I had the cart before the horse, Davos said. I
was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should
have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne.”
Stannis pointed north. “There is where I’ll find the
foe that I was born to fight.”
“His name may not be spoken,” Melisandre added
softly. “He is the God of Night and Terror, Jon Snow, and
these shapes in the snow are his creatures.”
“They tell me that you slew one of these walking corpses
to save Lord Mormont’s life,” Stannis said. “it
may be that this is your war as well, Lord Snow. If you will give
me your help.”
“My sword is pledged to the Night’s Watch, Your
Grace,” Jon Snow answered carefully.
That did not please the king. Stannis ground his teeth and said,
“I need more than a sword from you.”
Jon was lost. “My lord?”
“I need the north.” The north. “I . . . my brother Robb
was King in the North . . . ”
“Your brother was the rightful Lord of Winterfell. If he
had stayed home and done his duty, instead of crowning himself and
riding off to conquer the riverlands, he might be alive today. Be
that as it may. You are not Robb, no more than I am
Robert.”
The harsh words had blown away whatever sympathy Jon might have
had for Stannis. “I loved my brother,” he said.
“And I mine. Yet they were what they were, and so are we.
I am the only true king in Westeros, north or south. And you are
Ned Stark’s bastard.” Stannis studied him with those
dark blue eyes. “Tywin Lannister has named Roose Bolton his
Warden of the North, to reward him for betraying your brother. The
ironmen are fighting amongst themselves since Balon Greyjoy’s
death, yet they still hold Moat Cailin, Deepwood Motte,
Torrhen’s Square, and most of the Stony Shore. Your
father’s lands are bleeding, and I have neither the strength
nor the time to stanch the wounds. What is needed is a Lord of
Winterfell. A loyal Lord of Winterfell.” He is looking at me, Jon thought, stunned. “Winterfell is
no more. Theon Greyjoy put it to the torch.”
“Granite does not burn easily,” Stannis said.
“The castle can be rebuilt, in time. It’s not the walls
that make a lord, it’s the man, Your northmen do not know me,
have no reason to love me, yet I will need their strength in the
battles yet to come. I need a son of Eddard Stark to win them to my
banner.” He would make me Lord of Winterfell. The wind was gusting, and
Jon felt so light-headed he was half afraid it would blow him off
the Wall. “Your Grace,” he said, “you forget. I
am a Snow, not a Stark.”
“It’s you who are forgetting,” King Stannis
replied.
Melisandre put a warm hand on Jon’s arm. “A king can
remove the taint of bastardy with a stroke, Lord Snow.” Lord Snow. Ser Alliser Thorne had named him that, to mock his
bastard birth. Many of his brothers had taken to using it as well,
some with affection, others to wound. But suddenly it had a
different sound to it in Jon’s ears. It
sounded . . . real. “Yes,” he said,
hesitantly, “kings have legitimized bastards before,
but . . . I am still a brother of the
Night’s Watch. I knelt before a heart tree and swore to hold
no lands and father no children.”
“Jon.” Melisandre was so close he could feel the
warmth of her breath. “R’hllor is the only true god. A
vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes.
Open your heart and let the light of the Lord come in. Burn these
weirwoods, and accept Winterfell as a gift of the Lord of
Light.”
When Jon had been very young, too young to understand what it
meant to be a bastard, he used to dream that one day Winterfell might be his. Later, when he was older, he had been ashamed of
those dreams. Winterfell would go to Robb and then his sons, or to
Bran or Rickon should Robb die childless. And after them came Sansa
and Arya. Even to dream otherwise seemed disloyal, as if he were
betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths. I never
wanted this, he thought as he stood before the blue-eyed king and
the red woman. I loved Robb, loved all of
them . . . I never wanted any harm to come to
any of them, but it did. And now there’s only me. All he had
to do was say the word, and he would be Jon Stark, and nevermore a
Snow. All he had to do was pledge this king his fealty, and
Winterfell was his. All he had to do . . .
. . . was forswear his vows again. And this time it would not be a ruse. To claim his
father’s castle, he must turn against his father’s
gods.
King Stannis gazed off north again, his gold cloak streaming
from his shoulders. “It may be that I am mistaken in you, Jon
Snow. We both know the things that are said of bastards. You may
lack your father’s honor, or your brother’s skill in
arms. But you are the weapon the Lord has given me. I have found
you here, as you found the cache of dragonglass beneath the Fist,
and I mean to make use of you. Even Azor Ahai did not win his war
alone. I killed a thousand wildlings, took another thousand
captive, and scattered the rest, but we both know they will return.
Melisandre has seen that in her fires. This Tormund Thunderfist is
likely re-forming them even now, and planning some new assault. And
the more we bleed each other, the weaker we shall all be when the
real enemy falls upon us.”
Jon had come to that same realization. “As you say, Your
Grace.” He wondered where this king was going.
“Whilst your brothers have been struggling to decide who
shall lead them, I have been speaking with this Mance
Rayder.” He ground his teeth. “A stubborn man, that
one, and prideful. He will leave me no choice but to give him to
the flames. But we took other captives as well, other leaders. The
one who calls himself the Lord of Bones, some of their clan chiefs,
the new Magnar of Thenn. Your brothers will not like it, no more
than your father’s lords, but I mean to allow the wildlings
through the Wall . . . those who will swear me
their fealty, pledge to keep the king’s peace and the
king’s laws, and take the Lord of Light as their god. Even
the giants, if those great knees of theirs can bend. I will settle
them on the Gift, once I have wrested it away from your new Lord
Commander. When the cold winds rise, we shall live or die together.
It is time we made alliance against our common foe.” He
looked at Jon. “Would you agree?”
“My father dreamed of resettling the Gift,” Jon
admitted. “He and my uncle Benjen used to talk of it.”
He never thought of settling it with wildlings,
though . . . but he never rode with wildlings,
either. He did not fool himself; the free folk would make for
unruly subjects and dangerous neighbors. Yet when he weighed
Ygritte’s red hair against the cold blue eyes of the wights,
the choice was easy. “I agree.”
“Good,” King Stannis said, “for the surest way
to seal a new alliance is with a marriage. I mean to wed my Lord of
Winterfell to this wildling princess.”
Perhaps Jon had ridden with the free folk too long; he could not
help but laugh. “Your Grace,” he said, “captive
or no, if you think you can just give Val to me, I fear you have a
deal to learn about wildling women. Whoever weds her had best be
prepared to climb in her tower window and carry her off at
swordpoint . . . ”
“Whoever?” Stannis gave him a measuring look.
“Does this mean you will not wed the girl? I warn you, she is
part of the price you must pay, if you want your father’s
name and your father’s castle. This match is necessary, to
help assure the loyalty of our new subjects. Are you refusing me,
Jon Snow?”
“No,” Jon said, too quickly. It was Winterfell the
king was speaking of, and Winterfell was not to be lightly refused.
“I mean . . . this has all come very
suddenly, Your Grace. Might I beg you for some time to
consider?”
“As you wish. But consider quickly. I am not a patient
man, as your black brothers are about to discover.” Stannis
put a thin, fleshless hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Say
nothing of what we’ve discussed here today. To anyone. But
when you return, you need only bend your knee, lay your sword at my
feet, and pledge yourself to my service, and you shall rise again
as Jon Stark, the Lord of Winterfell.”