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“You cannot ask me to bear him in my hall any longer.” Catelyn seethed. She held herself very straight, chin lifted as if a straight spine might be a raft. “I have borne him. I have tried. I have held my tongue until it bled. I have let my daughters call him brother and my sons look to him as if…” Her mouth pressed thin. “Either the boy goes, or I do. I take my children, and I go to Riverrun where we may at least live without the daily insult of his presence at my table.”

Ned’s mouth opened and closed once. “He is my son.”

“No.” She said, and the single syllable was a pulled thread that threatened to unravel the whole cloak. “No, he is your shame. If you will not cut it away, then you ask me and mine to wear it for you, and I will not.” Her voice did not shake. “I will not.”

Ned’s hands had scars on them, pale as threads, old as the rebellion. “Catelyn.” He said, and it sounded almost gentle. “He is a boy. A good one. He has harmed no one.”

Ned couldn’t do it. He couldn’t turn Jon away. That was his son. His sister’s son. He loved him as his own. He couldn’t just turn him away. Send him off somewhere. 

“You brought him into our bed. Into our family.” She said, and there were the years in it, the winters and the hot, slow summers. “Every kindness I show him is devotion you should have shown me. Every time my children look at him, they remember the story whispered beneath the story of our lives. My daughters will marry and people will look at them and think of him. Is that what you want for Sansa? For Arya? Do you want Robb to learn that oaths are things to be set aside when the blood runs hot?”

“Do not make a lesson of him to our son.” Ned said. “Robb learns at my side. He learns steel and truth.”

“He learns that you will keep the boy who is not mine closer than the woman you married.” She took a breath and met his eyes. “I have endured the looks, the pity, the shame from the moment you brought him home. I tolerated it. I thought you would grow out of this soon enough, that it was the grief you felt at losing your father, brother and sister in the war. I am done with waiting for you to come to your senses. Either he takes the black and is gone, or you put him on the road to the Citadel and keep him there until his hair turns grey and his sword arm softens. Or I pack the carts. This is not new cruelty, Ned. It is the end of a very old one.”

Silence ate the space between them. Torchlight made moving things on the walls where no things moved. Ned, who could stand a battlefield like a tree stands wind, looked suddenly like a man standing in a house with fire under the floorboards.

“I will not send him to the Wall as punishment.” He said, the words rough. “The Wall is not a midden for the living. It is oaths and hard men and old danger. It is not a lesson for my wife’s spite.”

Her eyes flashed. “Then send him to the Citadel and call it honor. Let them shave his head and gild him with chain. Or call him into this room and tell him that the comfort of your lawful wife and the safety of your daughters require his absence. Use whatever word puts your head on the pillow at night, Lord Stark. I want him gone. Or you will never see me or my children again.”

Ned’s jaw moved. The lines around his mouth deepened. “You would make me choose between my son and the woman I swore before gods and men to love and protect?”

“I am asking you to choose to protect the children you have with me. Not the one you had with some tavern whore.” Catelyn said, softer now, because a softer knife slides deeper. “We cannot go on like this. You cannot ask it of me any longer.”

The torch hissed. Somewhere far in the keep, a door shut with a thud that sounded like something final. Ned ran a hand over his mouth and beard and looked at the nearest banner, as if the cloth might have counsel. The direwolf watched him back, pale on grey.

“I will speak to Jon.” He said at last, and his voice had the toneless calm he used to walk through storms. 

He left her then. He did not slam the door. The fire on the wall fluttered when he passed and then it stilled. Catelyn placed her hands on the back of the chair where she had faced him, and she stayed very still until her fingers stopped shaking. She did not like to see her husband in so much pain, but this needed to be done. For their family to survive, this had to be done. For two and ten years she had to live with the reminder of her husband’s sin every single day. She could not bear it any longer. Someone was leaving Winterfell in a days time, she was just praying it was Jon Snow and not her and her children. 

Jon was not at the door when Ned came. He was in the narrow corridor that smelled of cold stone and tallow, where the rushes always seemed to be half new and half old no matter how often they were changed, and he was staring at his own door as if it might say something to him. His breath made small ghosts in the torchlight.

“Jon.” Ned softly said.

Jon turned quickly. He did that, always, like a boy called from the edges of a hall. He tried, and failed, to hide the way his face looked for approval first, before anything.

“Father.” Jon said, because he could not bring himself to say “my lord” when it was only them.

Ned’s eyes warmed and then cooled like they had been ordered to do it by a council of other parts of him. “Walk with me.” He said.

They took the steps down by the wall-walk where the wind snuck through arrow slits and tugged cloaks. The yard spread slate and snow below. A pair of stable boys laughed softly over some shared mischief; the sound lifted and died. Ned said nothing for the length of a count to one hundred. Jon counted, because counting was something to do with hands you could not fold and unfold without someone noticing.

“At times a house is a ship.” Ned said at last. “A captain takes on salt, provisions, a crew; and sometimes a weight that seemed fair in dock becomes a burden in a storm. If he cuts it loose, he may regret it forever. If he keeps it, the ship may founder. There are no kindly choices at sea, Jon.”

Jon swallowed. “Have I…”

“You have done nothing wrong.” Ned said quickly, and louder than he meant. He drew breath. “Nothing. You are a good boy. You have honored our house in every way you could. You have made me proud.”

A little piece of Jon that had been waiting its whole life to hear that stood very straight inside him. The rest waited for the blow.

“Your place here.” Ned said, looking out over the yard rather than at Jon. “Has been a point of… strain. For years. It is time it was addressed, not with cold shoulders and cutting glances, but with truth and honor. I will not send you to The Wall as punishment. I will not make of you a culprit when you are not one.”

Jon’s throat felt tight and raw. “I don’t want…” He started, and then didn’t know how to finish because he did not know what he did not want. He did not want to leave the only place that had ever been home. He did not want to eat at a table where Lady Stark’s eyes slid around him as if he were a place she did not wish to look. He did not want to lose his siblings. He did not want to lose the few friends he had made within the servants and small folk. Mostly, he did not want to be alone. To be abandoned by his only parent.

Ned spared him finishing it. “There are choices. The Citadel is one. The brothers of the Night’s Watch are another. Both honorable. Both difficult. I will support you in either. If The Wall, then I will ride you there myself and set a cloak on your shoulders and say that I am proud. Your uncle Benjen is there. He will help to finish raising you into a great man. If the Citadel, then I will ride with you to Oldtown and present you to the Seneschal as a son of Winterfell who values knowledge.”

He didn’t want to ever go South, but he would not allow his young son to travel that road alone. He would go with him and make sure it was a safe and good place for him to be. Ned didn’t know which would be worse, but if he had to choose he would choose The Wall for Jon. Only because Benjen was there and he would make sure Jon knew what love felt like. What it would be like to be hugged whenever you wanted or needed. Ned had tried his best with Jon. He had tried to make sure Jon knew he was loved by him. That when he was hurt or sick, Ned was there to help take care of him. He didn’t want Jon to go. He wished he could have wrapped his arms around him and never let him go. But keeping Jon meant he would lose his five other children and that was something his heart couldn’t bear either. If Jon left, maybe in time Catelyn would calm down and he could bring Jon back. He was too young to take his vows at either place, so they had some time. 

“I will think.” Jon said. His voice put the words in a straight line. “I will think, Father.”

Ned nodded, and the hand that settled on Jon’s shoulder was heavy and careful, as if shoulders break. “Do not think in fear.” He said. “Think in truth. You are not a burden, and you are not a shame. Let the choice be yours because it is yours, not because you are pushed.”

He left Jon near the shadow of the arch so that the boy could stand and be no one to anyone for a minute. Jon stood. The wind on the wall found the sweat at the back of his neck and cooled it. He wrapped his arms in his cloak until he felt like a tied bundle.

He went to the yard because moving a body sometimes moves a mind. He picked up one of the practice blades and began hitting a straw dummy. Ser Rodrik was there, as he often was; the big man bundled thick, grey beard stiff with cold, his bald pate under a fur cap he pretended was not a concession to the season.

“Jon.” Rodrik said, as if the boy had not been called something else for a long while now by people who kept their voices sweet and their eyes sharp. “Your guard is creeping low again. Elbow up. There. Yes, that’s a hand attached to your sword, not a sack of turnips. Think. Don’t just swing like you mean to break the air.”

Jon breathed and did as he was told. The blunted blade smacked and turned. Rodrik stepped around him the way a man does when he has walked round a thing for years and knows where his boots will go before he picks them up. “Again.” He said, and then again.

When they stopped at last, steam rose off Jon like a horse. He wiped his face with a towel that had seen laundry more often than some men saw the inside of a sept. “Ser.” He said, and he had meant to wait, but the words were hot inside him, and there was no sense in waiting. Jon didn’t truly have the time. “You served near The Wall once.”

“I did,” Rodrik said. “When I had more hair than beard.”

“Tell me the truth of it.” He surprised himself with the urgency in his voice. “Not the songs. Not the boasts. What it is.”

Rodrik put the practice sword back in its rack and leaned both hands on another as if it were a railing. His eyes went up toward the wall-walks, toward the north beyond the stone north. “Truth, then. The Wall is cold, first and last. Cold in ways that get inside your teeth and make them ache. The castles are old. Most are empty. The men are… men. Some fine, many not. Thieves who chose black over lost fingers. Murderers with good reasons and bad. Some traitors that chose the cold over beheading and rapers that chose to keep their cocks. Boys who ran from a lord’s wrath and boys who ran from hunger. You get brothers if you make them with work and with duty. The Watch is not what it was, which is to say it is like most things built by men.”

Jon’s heart sank and rose at once. There was something almost merciful in hearing that even legends had seams and old patches.

“You, lad.” Rodrik said, and his voice went softer because he was going to say something that might land like a fist or a hand. “You are quick. That is not what I mean when I say ‘talent,’ though. I mean you think while you move. You try, at least. You see where a thing works and where it doesn’t. That’s why I bark at you. I’d not waste breath on a boy who only wants to swing hard. You’d do The Watch some good if you chose it. But…” He looked Jon square, dropping the soldier’s humor. “...it would bury you. I think it would. Not the snow. The sameness. The slow grind. Not yet. Not for a boy with eyes like windows, always looking for where the draft gets in.”

Jon tasted iron in his mouth from a bitten cheek. “I have to choose. The Night’s Watch or the Citadel. They are my only choices. Lady Stark has run out of tolerance. I must choose or it will be chosen for me.” He said. His voice made the words sound like stones he turned over to see if there were grubs underneath.

Rodrik snorted and Jon didn’t know if it was because of the choices or because he was being forced out by Lady Stark. “Books are fine. Luwin’s proof. But they chain you there and call it learning. They call it a chain, too, clever bastards. No swords, no whoring, no gambling. I have no quarrel with any of that for men who want such lives. But for you? You are a swordsman, a fighter. You are smart as a whip, won’t ever deny that, but you don’t belong being chained.” He scratched the bearded wattle under his chin. “There’s a third choice, if you’ve a mind.”

Jon’s head came up, quick. “Ser?”

“White Harbor.” Rodrik said. “Lord Manderly’s brood is thick and his need for steady steel thicker. A squire’s life in the city is different to a holdfast. More tar and fish than pine and snow. I can put in a word. Wyman Manderly is fat and clever. His son Wylis is fat and kind. The younger, Ser Wendel, is fat and brave. That’s the Manderlys for you.” His eyes twinkled for a moment, then sobered. “It’s a place a boy can learn the proper way. Not The Wall’s hard, not the Citadel’s quiet. Ships, trade, oaths. Fighting when needed. Eating well always.” He tapped Jon’s shoulder with two knuckles. “You have a gift. It is a poor lord who buries gifts just to keep a hall quiet.”

Jon’s breath fogged in twin streams. “Would you…”

“I’ll write the letter,” Rodrik said, gruff, as if writing letters had offended him personally at some point and he had decided to forgive them. “If you want it. If you don’t, I’ll not take it amiss. You ask for truth; I give it. The Wall would waste you. The Citadel would dry you to parchment.” He looked toward the tower where Luwin’s rookery hunched against the wind. “Ask the Maester. He’ll say it kinder than I can.”

Jon bowed his head, because he felt like the ground might tilt if he didn’t. “Thank you.” He managed. “Ser.”

“No matter where you go, you write to me. I want to hear all about it.”

Jon gave a nod with a small smile. Ser Rodrik had always been nice to him and always treated him just like everyone else. He never called him a bastard. He never looked down upon him. He saw a young boy, it was just that simple to him. Jon left the cold of the yard for the slant stairs that wrapped the maester’s tower. The steps were worn in the middle by feet that had climbed them, age after age, to be told what was worth knowing. He liked that thought, that you could wear stone with wanting to know. The door was half-closed, and the smell that came out was warm oils, feather dust, old vellum, and the clean stink of birds.

“Jon.” Maester Luwin said, and there was no surprise in it because Luwin, like most men who watch well, was rarely surprised. “Come in.”

Jon did. The rooks in their perches watched him, counted him, decided he was not food or threat, and settled. The brazier ticked. Luwin’s chain moved when he turned; it made a small dry rattle like rain at the window.

“The time has come for me to decide if I wish to go to The Wall with my uncle or go to the Citadel. Ser Rodrik feels that neither would be best for me and has offered to send a letter to Lord Manderly about me squiring there. I know the truth about the Night’s Watch, I now need to know the truth of the Citadel.” Jon explained. There was a way a boy can be blunt and polite at once, and he found it. “I will not be soothed with stories. If I go, I will not go under a mixed sky.”

Luwin’s mouth smiled and his eyes did something more complicated. Jon could see he was not pleased by this piece of information. Him and Maester Luwin had spent a great deal of time together over the past ten years. Jon had quickly passed Robb in his lessons and often Jon and Maester Luwin would discuss many different things. Things not even his father knew about. Jon had always loved learning, especially if it was about something that could help people. Maester Luwin always encouraged Jon to explore his mind and all of his ideas. He taught him how to draw, how to break his ideas down into smaller pictures so he could put them all together to see the full view. There had been a lot of long nights with them sitting hunched over sketches trying to make them even better. 

Maester Luwin patted a stool next to him. “Sit, then. The truth is not so proud it cannot be told sitting down.” Jon went and took his normal seat as Maester Luwin continued. “The Citadel is work. It is reading until your neck aches. It is copying until your hand cramps. It is arguments that lasts three days and does not move one stubborn mind. It is wonder, too. Doors that open because the right question pressed them. It is men who will say what they think is true even when kings want another truth served to them salted and sweet. It is…” He touched his chain.“...a chain you choose link by link. And when you choose it, you choose to put aside some things forever.”

“Swords.” Jon said.

“Yes.” Said Luwin, and how gently he said it told Jon that Luwin had chosen, one day, to put something aside too. “A sword is a choice. You also have to swear off love, a family, land, you do not get to pick which House you serve. And you will be serving. Even if you do not agree with what you have been asked. A maester’s counsel is most useful when it confirms what a lord already wishes to hear. Swords, hopes, dreams and the Citadel do not play well together. You might hide a dagger in your boot and scratch the itch sometimes, but the itch would never leave.”

“You have never lied to Lord Stark,” Jon said quickly, as if he needed to defend the man who had just offered to cut him loose kindly.

“No.” Luwin said. “But I have chosen which truths to set before him and which to let lie quietly until time turned them over on its own. That is a form of lying with clean hands. We are taught to be careful where we place fire. Sometimes we call dragons a tale even when our bones know they are a memory, not because we hate truth, but because truth set on the wrong table burns more than it warms.”

Jon looked at the racks of scrolls. “I do not think you are trying to turn me from the Citadel to keep me out of your storehouse.” He said, and Luwin’s mouth smiled again at that.

“No.” Luwin said. “I am trying to turn you from the Citadel because you move like a boy who has been told to sit since he could walk. If you were a different boy I would put a book in your hand and lock the door around you and call it kindness. You are not that boy.” He got up and went to a small chest near the brazier. He took from it a folded leather roll, a little brass weight with a hole drilled through the top, and a brass instrument that looked like a spider had eaten a circle. “Take these. A quill roll. A folding compass. A weight. Measure what you see. Record it. Weigh it. The world is not as it is sung. Go and find the places where it squeaks. Then oil them.”

Jon held the weight. It was heavy for its size. It felt like something you could keep in your pocket and take out when a man said, “Trust me, this weighs true,” and say, quietly, “Does it?” He had never owned anything that belonged to him as much as it did the second Luwin laid it in his palm.

“If I don’t go to The Wall or the Citadel.” He said, and the words made a shape in the air that felt more real. “Where do I go? White Harbor to squire?”

“You go out.” Luwin said, with a little shrug that was not careless, only honest. “To the beeches. To the road. To White Harbor, perhaps, if Ser Rodrik writes the letter and you wish to see what a fat, clever lord does with ships and silver. Maybe you go farther. Maybe you go south. Maybe you pass through Oldtown and look at the Citadel from the street and say, ‘I am glad that house is there and I am glad I am not inside it.’ You will find work with your hands and your eyes, not because you are a lord’s son, but because you can fix what is in front of you. That is worth more than a name in most places where names are not tall enough to reach the rafters. Go out into the world Young Jon and learn who you are first before you ever try to fit yourself into a box just because it is in front of you.”

“Will he be angry?” Jon asked, and he did not name Ned because saying a name makes a thing small enough to look at and he did not wish to make Ned small.

“He will be proud and he will grieve, but he will grieve no matter where you go.” Luwin said, and because Luwin spoke truth, Jon believed him. “He will tell himself that he chose, because that is easier on a father than knowing a son has left. You will write to him. Often. You will not be a ghost he cannot feed.”

The brazier popped. Outside, the rookery’s wind sounded like a hand rubbing along old parchment.

“Thank you.” Jon said, and he meant it past the polite form. “For telling me the truth and not the song.”

“I am old enough to be tired of songs.” Luwin said dryly. “Go sleep. If you choose to leave, do it at a decent hour and not at midnight like a thief. Break your fast first. Take a loaf for the road. No one thinks well on an empty belly.”

Jon smiled despite the weight in his chest. “Yes, Maester.”

He did not sleep. It is one thing to be told to do a sensible thing; it is another to ask a heart to consent. He went to his cell, for it had never been a bedchamber, and set the gifts on his narrow table and sat on his narrow bed and looked at the wall where a little crack had grown over the years to look like a river. He rolled the weight in his palm. He laid out the quills in a neat row and then rolled them again because order made the world feel like a thing that could be touched and turned.

He took from beneath his straw mattress the few bits of vellum he had made his own with hard looks and a soft voice, and he bound them with a leather thong and then added more from the stack that Luwin had given him some moons ago and said nothing about. He scratched a title at the top of the first page because names make things real.

Things That Work, he wrote, in careful block hand, and then under it, because that felt too proud, he added: And Why.

He drew a lever. He drew a gate with counterweights and wrote tiny numbers beside the stones that would pull, and a note: if the weight is wrong, the gate slams or refuses to fall; both break fingers. He drew a cart’s wheel with spokes and marked where the ice usually did its worst and how to wrap leather in winter to keep it from cracking. He drew the yard’s practice sword and wrote: less wrist, more hip, because Rodrik had told him that and it had turned something that hurt into something that sang.

He stopped, at last, because the candle was guttering and the heat had chewed the air thin. He packed. He did it quiet, not because he was ashamed, but because quiet felt right for a thing that was mostly a promise and not a departure. He had nothing worth packing that would not look like a theft if seen; he owned his boots, a second shirt, the wool leggings with the patch at the thigh, a pair of knit gloves that had been a gift last winter from Old Nan when she had mistaken him in the dark for Robb and then said, “Keep them, you’re as much of the cold as he is.” And he had laughed and said. “Yes, Nan.”

He tucked the quill roll, folded and tied, into the small satchel he had mended twice. The compass he put in the pouch that would sit at his belt and knock his hip if he ran. The weight, he slid into the inside of his left glove so that his knuckles were a little heavier and he could feel fairness against his skin when his hand was closed. He put a little sewing kit at the bottom of the satchel, the awl he had borrowed and never returned because the armory had a dozen and he had none; the needle he had traded a story for with a girl who worked in the kitchens and liked to hear him make up names for things. He tied his blanket roll with a strip of old rein.

He took a last look at the narrow place where he had taught himself to be smaller. He lifted the blanket, smoothed the straw flat. He laughed, soft, because it seemed wrong to make a bed he was leaving and right, somehow, to leave a thing tidy for whoever came next. He put his hand on the doorframe and felt the groove where his palm had rested a hundred times when he had stopped to listen to the hall before stepping into it. He did not kiss the wood. He was not a boy who kissed wood.

He went to Ned’s door. That was harder than packing. He was not afraid of Lord Stark’s anger. He was afraid of his love. Love is heavy to carry when you are choosing to walk away from it. Though, he supposed he wasn’t really choosing. He was being forced out. The choice he was making was where he would end. He held the folded vellum between two fingers and bent down to slide it under the door with care as if he were feeding something that might bite. The direwolf carved there watched him with the same look it wore in the yard: patient, hungry, true.

Father—

He had written,

Ser Rodrik spoke true of the Wall. Maester Luwin spoke true of me. I will not shame you. I will learn where the world breaks and mend what I can. I will keep my sword-hand. I do not know where I will go, but it will not be to a place where life is sworn away. I will write. —Jon.

He stayed bent for a moment with his forehead nearly against the carved wood and his eyes closed because that made the rest of him quiet. He imagined the moment Ned would find the letter; standing, perhaps, with his hair damp from the basin, the dawn making his shadow longer than his body, the old pain in his eyes that had nothing to do with Jon and everything to do with a tower in the south. He imagined Ned’s hands, careful with paper the way they were careful with blades and children.

Jon forced himself to move. He had made his decision and he would not cry over it now. He went to the godswood. He had said his prayers there since he was old enough to know that some trees listen and some do not. The oaks and beeches were dark hulks with a rime of frost on them, but the heart tree held a pale note in the dark like a face seen in a cold dream. The eyes bled, as they always did, but the mouth did not look unkind.

Jon stood in front of it and spoke the only vow he had that felt like it could be said without a septon. “I will learn.” He said, and the words curled in the cold like breath. “I will help. I will keep my sword-hand and not become a man who only points while other men do the work. I will return when I can, and I will be worth what you spent to make me.” He did not know whether he was speaking to gods he had never seen or to the man who would bend to pick up the letter or to the boy he had been when he had first learned that people talk around you when they do not want to talk to you. It did not matter. The saying made it true.

He broke a loaf in half and left a heel at the base of the heart tree because leaving a thing to hungry things is a ritual older than most prayers. He tucked the rest under his arm. He thought of Luwin telling him to eat breakfast and smiled again because Luwin’s kindness had a way of putting wool on hard corners. He ate in the dark with the sound of the little stream that never froze because the springs under the keep ran warmer than the air. The bread was yesterday’s, but bread with a promise tastes fresh.

By the time the sky had made up its mind to grey, the yard had begun to creak to life. A groom cursed a shoe. A boy laughed the way boys do when they’re trying not to make the sound a man makes. Rodrik’s voice rolled across stone like a barrel. “Up! Up, you sorry lot!” And there was the pleasant clatter of wood on wood as practice swords kissed. Jon’s feet went to the sound as if sound could be a path, and then he stopped himself because going to Rodrik would mean staying long enough to let Rodrik’s hand on his shoulder turn him around, and he could not afford to be turned by anything except his own choosing.

He pulled his cloak tighter and went to the outer gate. The portcullis were up; the guards wore their cold like another layer of mail. They nodded to him. One of them, Tom, had taught Jon how to cheat at dice and how not to, and he looked at the satchel and the blanket roll and the way Jon’s jaw was set and he did not ask anything.

“Cold road.” Tom said.

“Colder if I wait.” Jon said.

“Aye.” Tom said, and stepped aside. “Heard they were lookin’ for stable lads in Torrhen’s Square. Pays room and board.” 

“Thanks Tom.” Jon said with a kind smile.

“Be safe.” Tom said with a pointed look and Jon gave a nod as he stepped through the gate.

The world beyond the gate was the same as it had been the day before: snow old enough to be pressed down and dirty, new snow on top of it like a fresh linen thrown over an old bruise; the road’s two dark grooves where sledges and carts wore truth into the lies snow tells about what is underneath. The air had that particular clean that only happens when it is trying to bite you. Jon’s breath walked ahead of him in long puffs. He adjusted the strap on his satchel; he adjusted nothing else. The Keep behind him got smaller like a thing in a man’s memory, not like a thing on the horizon.

He did not look back. There is superstition in that, yes, but there is also mercy. To look back and see a shape in a window and think it is someone and have it be no one is a cruelty. To look back and see no shape at all is worse.

He walked. The first mile was a thing for the legs. The second was a thing for the lungs. By the third, the work went inside. He began to plan not with fear but with the same straightness with which he set the lines on a practice sword.

White Harbor first, perhaps, because a letter could follow him there and if he chose Rodrik’s third path he could step into it with a kind of grace. Or perhaps not. He would go to Torrhen’s Square, because it was on the way to White Harbor and Jon would need to stop in Keeps along the way if he was ever going to survive the weather. He could work for room and board for a little while, maybe there would be something he could fix. He could speak with the Maester there and read what was available to him. Then he could move on to the next Keep. Learning with books and swords until eventually he would find himself and a new place to call home.

On a small rise where beeches gathered like old women in coats, he stopped and drew the compass from his pouch. He set the needle free and watched it argue with the sky until it stopped. He drew a line in the little book and wrote: north, and then wrote: not always where you think, because it pleased him to put a true thing next to a thing the world pretended was true but wasn’t always.

He ate the rest of the bread walking. He hummed, and the tune was something Old Nan used to sing to the younger ones when the wind’s voice changed and the keep said things you didn’t want to hear. He thought of Robb and felt the familiar twist, love and the other thing that is like love’s shadow and has no name and tastes like iron when you bite it. He thought of Arya and smiled into the scarf over his mouth because if there was a person in the world who might one day look at a road and say “mine,” it was Arya. He thought of Sansa and hoped that kindness did not get taught out of her like a habit a girl grows out of when she learns how rooms work. He thought of Bran and Rickon and how young they were. They had their whole life ahead of them and Jon hated that he wouldn’t get to watch them grow up.

He did not think of Lady Stark. Thinking of Lady Stark was like stepping on a thin spot on a frozen river.

By the time the sun had decided to rise properly and not only pretend, the beeches threw their long grey shadows east. The road curved. The world made the little sounds that mean it has woken; birds, ice wedging, the faraway roll of wheels. Jon’s boots creaked. He was thinking about whether he could stop in two miles to rewrap his toes in another layer of wool and whether the owl prints he saw were from that owl or an owl that simply looked like that owl, when the beeches that were a little darker than their neighbors moved in a way beeches do not. He stopped because moving things that ought not to move have earned the right to make boys stop.

From between the trunks, a shape slid like river water, silent on snow. A wolf. It stepped down from the little rise and looked at him. It was big, but not as big as the stories say about wolves when those stories are told by men who want to piss in a circle and keep you in it. Its eyes were blue like the sky and its coat was a thick light grey. It did not growl. It did not lick its chops. It did not do anything except look.

Jon’s hand went to the short blade at his hip and then took itself off. He stood with his arms at his sides like a man before a king who has asked him a question and he is trying to decide whether to answer with truth or with safety. He chose truth, the way he had chosen it all day. He lowered his head a little, the way you do when your body knows what courtesy is even if you have never been taught.

The wolf blinked. It turned its head to the side. It made a sound so small that if the road had been any louder, Jon would have thought it was his own breath in his scarf. It stepped to one side, and behind it something else moved. Not another wolf. Something smaller, and at once larger because it moved as if this were what the world had been made to do since it was new. A pup, Jon saw, and the word moved through him like a hand laid on a fevered brow. White on white. Red eyes that did not look cruel, only old. The pup’s paws were a little too big for its legs the way boys’ hands are sometimes too big for their sleeves, and its head was rounder than it would be when it leaned over men in the dark.

The she-wolf, because that is what she was, and Jon knew it the way you know when a storm is coming even if you cannot smell the rain yet, stepped forward and set her muzzle in the air near Jon’s hand. He did not move. She inhaled, as if to make sure that the smell she had had in her head matched the smell in front of her. It must have, because she made no sound. She turned and nudged the pup with her nose, once, and then again when the pup looked like he might sit down and think about something instead. The pup looked at Jon. The pup looked at his mother. The pup took three wobbly steps and stopped in the lean of Jon’s left boot and put his small body against leather as if leather is a thing you can trust.

Jon’s breath left him and did not come back for two heartbeats. He went down on one knee because that is what you do when you are given a gift and are afraid that if you reach for it wrong it will break. He put his palms out. The pup sniffed. The pup stepped onto his hands as if that were a thing he had always meant to do. He was quiet. He was not shaking. He was simply there.

The she-wolf watched. Her head lifted. Her eyes blinked once, slowly, and then she turned and went back between the beeches into the trees and was gone as if the world had folded itself neatly along a seam and put her away.

“Hi.” Jon simply said to the little wolf pup. 

Jon held the pup and felt the small beating of a heart that had decided to trust him without a council meeting. The pup’s fur was not cold. It was warm the way fresh bread was warm. He did not have a name for it at first because names mean ownership and he did not own anything and he did not wish to begin. Then the pup put his head under Jon’s thumb, pressed, and fell still with his eyes open the way a thing does when it is not sleeping but is not not-sleeping, and the word came up from a place under his ribs that is where true words are kept: Ghost.

He did not say it aloud because saying a new name aloud calls attention, and there was no one on the road but the boy and the pup and the trees and whatever the trees talk to when men are not around. He tucked the small white thing into his cloak so that the pup could hear his heart and decide if it wanted to synchronize, and he stood. He turned his face toward Torrhen’s Square and continued on.

He walked. The pup’s breath warmed his shirt. The weight in his glove tapped his knuckles when his hand swung and reminded him that fairness should be felt, not only spoken. The world opened a little, the way it does sometimes for no reason you can explain in a hall later. He did not think of Winterfell’s windows. He thought of a city by the sea where fat clever men counted and thin clever boys counted too and ships came in and ships went out and food moved and sometimes it did not move and people were hungry and he could fix that a little.

Behind him, the Keep gathered its day and put it on like armor. Ahead, beeches leaned to make a kind of arch as if a bride were coming. The snow made its dry little song under his boots. Ghost shifted once against him and settled. The sun, late and honest, came up.

Chapter Text

The corridor outside Ned’s chamber held the night’s cold like a mouth holds breath. He opened the door and found a folded square of vellum resting against the direwolf carved into the lintel, the way a sparrow might rest an instant on a hunter’s bow.

Jon’s hand, he knew it before he bent. The neat block letters. The care taken so that ink did not pool where it shouldn’t. He lifted the letter with fingers that had learned to be gentle with paper in a hard world and broke the simple tie.

Father—

Ser Rodrik spoke true of the Wall. Maester Luwin spoke true of me. I will not shame you. I will learn where the world breaks and mend what I can. I will keep my sword-hand. I do not know where I will go, but it will not be to a place where life is sworn away. I will write. —Jon.

He read it twice, because once only told him the words and twice told him the boy who had written them. The second reading landed in the soft places he had armored for years: I do not know where I will go. No goodbye. No safe starting place to picture. He had wanted to escort his son to where he would be living. He wanted to make sure it was a safe place for him to be, the right place. He wanted that time with him. To see him settled and cared for. He hated the thought of Jon going to The Wall at his age, but he took comfort in knowing that Benjen was there. That his brother would make sure his son was loved and cared for. Now, that was not possible, because his son was gone. Pride rose like a rash under the grief; a hard, clean pride that the boy’s words ran straight and honest even when they cut. Ned folded the vellum and slid it into the inside of his doublet, where his pulse tapped it as if to say: remember, remember.

He dressed without calling for help, because the hands that put him together should be the same hands that would undo him if it came to that. Cloak, belt, boots, the plain knife he used for bread and knots. He did not go first to the gate or the tower. He went to the hall, because the house was waking and there are truths a lord must say with steam rising off the porridge and the hounds not yet let in to beg.

The high table was half-laid and the rushes new underfoot. Catelyn sat straight-backed with a ledger open beside her trencher; the look she gave him was a question asked without moving the lips. Sansa sat to her right, composed as a prayer on a holy day, hands folded on her lap so gently it looked like a painting. Bran fidgeted with a wooden knight; Rickon swung his legs and watched them move. Theon came in with his grin already on his face. Robb hurried from the yard with sweat on his brow and snow in his hair, searching the benches before he saw his father; Arya slipped in late, braid crooked, eyes lit like a stag seeing open moor.

“Sit.” Ned said, and his voice ironed the sound out of the room. He waited until even the hounds in the shadows had settled on their elbows.

“Jon left before dawn.”

It happened quickly, and it happened slowly. Robb’s face went from open to shut, the way a door does when a wind takes it. Arya’s mouth found a word and didn’t speak it because she was busy keeping her eyes wide enough for it not to spill. Sansa’s shoulders lowered by the thickness of a breath. Theon smiled without teeth.

“I gave him choices.” Ned said. “The Citadel. The Night’s Watch. He chose neither. That choice is his. The peace of this house…” He let his eyes rest on Catelyn and then on the children and not longer on either “...demanded a change. That is on me.”

Robb’s chair scraped back. “You let him go?” He said. His voice wasn’t a boy’s voice and it wasn’t a man’s; it was a voice made by a plank half-sawed through.

“I told him the truth.” Ned said. “And I let him choose. If there is blame, lay it at my feet. Not at your lady mother’s.”

Catelyn placed two fingers lightly on Sansa’s wrist; a small benediction. “Your father did what keeps this hall whole.” She said. Her words were smooth as a stone turned in a pocket. Pride lived in them, and relief, and a tiredness that was not for public view.

Arya’s tin cup met the board with a clap. “You said family comes first. That the lone wolf dies and the pack survives. You made Jon a lone wolf.” She said. The words came out sharp and wrong; she knew it and did not take them back.

“He was never a part of this pack. He never should have been here. If your father had done what was right in the beginning none of you would have ever had to look upon him. Had to suffer his presence. He was a sin and shame against our family. Look at what he has now done. Your father gave him a choice between The Wall or the Citadel and he couldn’t even follow simple directions. He chose to go against your father, the Warden of the North, and completely disrespect his order. Those are not the actions of someone that loves this family. Those are the actions of someone that is selfish and sinful.” Catelyn said with a pointed look at her children.  

Sansa’s voice had the good taste to be soft. “It will be… proper now.” she said, and looked at her mother, who nodded once, approving the line.

“Jon chose to follow his heart. To not be forced into making a decision about his life. He had the strength to do that and it is a strength I hope all of you have.” Ned said with a look to his children. He was not going to allow his wife to try and tarnish this. He was terrified, but incredibly proud of Jon for making this choice. It took a great deal of bravery to make it. 

“He is not here, but that does not mean we stop being his family. We will write and we can write back. He will visit and we will share our stories. He is still your brother, no matter where in the realm he rests his head.” Ned added.  

Bran, who wanted everything to be a story, leaned forward. “Is he a knight now? He left at dawn.”

Rickon said “Snow?” to his own hands.

Theon shifted, trying on pleasure like a new coat. “About time.” He offered, and found Robb’s stare on him like a thrown axe. Ned didn’t raise his voice. He looked at Theon the way you look at a dog that has forgotten whose kitchen it’s in, and the boy remembered.

“Where did he go?” Robb demanded, because there had to be a direction you could ride in order to be a son.

“I’ll know in a moment.” Ned said. “Eat. Keep the hall steady.”

He felt Catelyn’s gaze follow him as he left; it had weight and it had edges, both. He would not measure either now. The yard took him up as yards take men who need to be walking and not thinking; the breath of the forges, the bark of a smith to a boy who had miscounted nails, the dull pleasing thump of practice blades finding each other’s flats. The cold reached under his cloak and touched his ribs and withdrew, satisfied to be remembered.

At the outer gate, Tom pulled his hood down and straightened when he saw the lord. He had a whittled look that came to men who stood too many hours watching other men come and go and not being either kind. His beard held frost the way hedge holds webs.

“When?” Ned asked.

“Before first light, My Lord.” Tom said. “Pack and blanket. No fuss. He had that look, set. I told him Torrhen’s Square was taking stable lads if a boy asked fair and worked. He thanked me. Went east. Didn’t look back.”

Ned breathed the east in through his nose as if it would tell him more. “Was he alone?”

“Aye.” Tom said. “Not even a horse.”

“It’s a twenty day walk from here.” Ned said, worried now that Jon was out there walking. At least on a horse he could make decent time. 

“Good lad,” Tom added, too late and too honest.

“Thank you, Tom.” Ned said, and the guard’s name warmed the thing that fear had chilled. 

He climbed the tower steps to Luwin’s rookery, where heat from the brazier and the sighing of birds made the air feel worked-on, like bread punched down and set to rise again.

“Maester.” Ned said.

Luwin looked up from a jar of sand he was drying. His chain shifted and spoke softly of years. “My Lord.” He said, and saw the answer in Ned’s face before it was asked. “He left.”

“You spoke with him.” It was not an accusation. It was the way you state a thing you can smell in a room.

“I did.” Luwin’s hands were steady as he set the jar down. “He asked me about the Citadel. I told him what it is when you are made for it and what it is when you are not. He did not ask me about the Watch, Ser Rodrik had already spoken to him about it.” 

“You turned him from both.” Ned said, doing his best to keep his worry from turning into anger. It was not Luwin’s fault. 

Luwin’s mouth made a shape that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite anything else. “I told him the truth. The Citadel is a chain you choose link by link. Some boys are born for it. Jon is not a boy who can thrive chained. The Watch is old duty ground down to its last hard stones. Some men go because it is the only honor left to them. Jon is not yet a man with only one honor left to spend. He was born with both hands open, one for a book, one for a blade. I would not be the man to close either.”

Ned looked at the birds, their intelligent blankness. “You knew he would go.”

“I knew that asking him to sit when his body was already on its feet would make him sick.” Luwin said gently. He took a breath and set his hands flat on the table, as if bracing himself against a small sea. “My Lord. There are truths about the boy that were never mine to speak. I swore. But I would be an old coward indeed to watch him swear away his life not knowing what he might be giving up.”

Ned felt the name that could have been said and was not thrash like a netted fish in his chest. He nodded once. It cost him something and bought him something else.

“He walks alone.” He said. Saying a thing gives it weight you can pick up.

“Then do not let him.” Luwin said. “Send eyes and steel you trust. Not to turn him, he has chosen. To keep him breathing long enough to learn what he is meant to learn.”

Ned looked down. On the table near Luwin’s elbow lay a handful of raven-feathers, glossy as oil. “Write to Torrhen’s Square. One of the guards may have steered him in that direction” He said. “Ask their maester to offer the boy work and a bed if he comes. Say that Eddard Stark vouches for his conduct and will be grateful.”

“I have already drafted it.” Luwin admitted, and at Ned’s look held up both hands. “It was one of the closer Keeps. Jon is smart, he would make sure to take the path with the most Keeps along the way.”

Ned stood a moment with the quiet ticking of the brazier and the small metal murmurs of Luwin’s chain for company. The truth had landed. The choice had been made. There was work that followed.

“Thank-you Maester Luwin.” Ned said, before he headed out. 

Ned made his way towards the godswood where the man he needed to speak with went to practice in the early morning hours. The godswood took him the way it takes any man who comes with honestly to it, with the courtesy of old things. Snow lay in small clean drifts under the bare limbs. The pool smoked a little where its springs remembered heat. The heart tree watched him without blinking, as it always had and always would.

Jory Cassel stood under the boughs as if he’d been planted there, working a slow pattern with a blunted blade as if each cut put a peg in a hole and he wanted them all snug. He turned when Ned came; wiped his brow with his sleeve; set the practice sword point-down in the crusted snow. He was square of shoulder and steady of eye and the years had set him the way a cooper sets a barrel hoop, tight, useful, true.

“My lord.” He said.

“Jory.” Ned said. He did not speak for a breath, and then another, because there are words a man must arrange properly or they will cut wrong. “Do you know how your father died?”

Jory’s face did that brief, unguarded thing faces do when a door you thought was locked opens. He nodded once. “At your side. On the way south after the war. My mother told me what you told her.”

“What I told her was true.” Ned said. “And it was not all that was true.”

They stood under the carved face and the bleeding eyes and the unfeeling sky, and Ned told him about a red mountain where snow sometimes fell and melted before it landed; about a tower with a name men had given it and another name it had for itself; about seven men and three, and the way three men can feel like a dozen when they stand in the right place for the wrong reasons. He spoke of Martyn Cassel and the way he had lifted his sword as if lifting meant keeping; of the Dawn-bright blade that had sung; of the way the ground smells when it drinks. He spoke of Lyanna and the veil between oath and theft; of bed-sheets and blood and a plea given on dying breath. He did not say the name that would make the old wound in his side open; he said sister instead, and the godswood took the word and set it somewhere it could be kept.

“Your father died so my sister’s son might live.” Ned said, when the tale had run itself out. He looked at Jory until it was not a lord looking at a sworn sword but a man looking at the son of a man he had loved. “I cannot command what I will ask. I ask you all the same. Ride after him. Keep him safe and unseen. If he won’t take the saddle, walk beside him. If he won’t take you, follow his prints. If he falls, put him on his feet. If he is taken, spend your breath buying him time. Do this and I will owe you a debt I can never pay. Refuse and I will not think the less of you for it.”

Jory lowered his head for the space of a breath, the way men do when something big passes overhead and its shadow is cool. When he lifted it, his mouth was set in the shape Martyn’s had been when he laughed. “My father would have died for Lady Lyanna’s child.” He said. “I’ll not do less living for him. I’ll go. I’ll keep him breathing. I’ll keep him unseen.”

“Take a spare mount.” Ned said, because love without sense is a candle in a window of a house already on fire. “He went on foot. You should be able to catch him long before he reaches Torrhen’s Square. Thank-you Jory.”

“I have sworn myself to House Stark, proudly. He is of Stark blood. I know my father would have given everything to guard Lady Lyanna and her son. I’ll keep him safe and maybe one day I can convince him to return.” Jory promised. 

“I hope so. Write, let me know if you need anything.”

“I will, My Lord.” Jory promised. 

Jory gave him one final look before he picked up his sword and made his way out of the godswood. Jory found Ser Rodrik in the armory and did not send a boy ahead. He pushed the door with his shoulder and stepped into heat and clangor and the iron smell that had been part of his childhood like bread. Rodrik was bare-headed, scolding a shield for refusing to stay where a boy held it, and then, seeing his nephew, he set the work aside as if it had been waiting to be set aside.

“Uncle.” Jory said, and the word came out steadier than he felt. “I’m leaving Winterfell.”

Rodrik took him in; face, stance, the way a man does when he’s measured the boy since he was waist-high. “Aye.” He said at once, eyes going softer. “And not for a hunt.”

“For Jon.” Jory said. “For… her son.” He did not say Lyanna’s name; it wasn’t his to say in rooms with other ears.

Rodrik’s beard lifted with the breath he let out. He always suspected, but he never said it outloud. It wasn’t his place to say anything. Anyone who had known Lyanna and knew Jon though, they all knew Jon was hers. It was not that great of a secret as Lord Stark thought it was. Not in The North. Not around the people that loved Lyanna. “Then I’ll not waste time being surprised.” He reached for a peg, took down a better winter cloak, good wool that remembered heat, and shook it once. “You tell me what you mean to do.”

“Catch him before Torrhen’s Square if I can.” Jory said. “Keep him safe and unseen. Walk if he won’t ride. Follow his prints if he won’t have me.”

Rodrik’s mouth quirked. “That’s sense. And sense is rarer than steel.” He moved like a man who’d packed a hundred lads for roads they’d never walked, quick hands, no fuss. He set a whetstone with a nick in one corner on the bench and slid it toward Jory. “Your father’s. Kept it after. It lies about sharpness, makes you sharpen twice. Suits you.”

Jory’s fingers closed around it the way a man closes around a promise. “Thank you.”

Rodrik added a pouch of coin, two rolls of dried meat, a flask, and from a peg near the door he took a small signal horn, plain but sure. “If you get into trouble, blow once low, once a finger higher. Those that have heard it know it is Winterfell’s call, the call of The North. Help will come and gates will open.” He adjusted the cloak at Jory’s shoulders, rough and tender at once, and then, breaking his own rules about men in the yard, he pulled his nephew into a brief hard embrace. It smelled of ash and oil and the years between them.

“Bring the boy back safe.” Rodrik said into his ear. “And bring yourself back, or I’ll come drag you home by the ear like I used to.”

Jory’s laugh was quick and young and gone again. “Aye, Uncle.”

Rodrik stepped back and looked at him as if he were a sword he’d finished setting true. “Proud of you.” He said. “Not for your swing. For your sense.”

“I learned it here.” Jory said.

“Get to the stables.” Rodrik said, turning to shout for a lad. “You have a lad to catch up to. One smart enough to not swear his life away, but not smart enough to take a bloody horse with him.” 

They both gave a small chuckle to that before Jory headed off for the stables to get the horses. He easily saddled his own and made sure to saddle Jon’s, pure black garrons. He made sure he had extra blankets and a cloak just in case Jon didn’t have much. Jon didn’t have much in the way of clothing to begin with and Jory didn’t know how long they would be staying in Keeps or where they would end up. He wouldn’t know the plan until he found Jon and spoke with him. Jory still wasn’t a hundred percent certain as to why Jon had left in the first place, something he was going to be getting to the bottom of once he found the boy. With the horses ready, Jory guided them both out and over to the gate where his uncle and Lord Stark were waiting. 

“I’ll head for Torrhen’s Square on the road. If Jon is going that way, he will stick with the road when he can.” Jory said. 

“Maester Luwin sent a raven to let Lord Tallhart know that Jon might be heading his way. To offer room and board. He left this morning just become sun up, so he is only a few hours ahead of you.” Ned said. 

Jory swung into the saddle and took up the second horse’s rein. He leaned down as far as he could and still be a man on a horse and said, low, “I’ll find him.” It wasn’t bravado. It was a plan spoken like it had already been executed.

Tom’s hands pushed the bar, pulled the rope. The portcullis lifted like a breath taken after too long underwater. The world beyond the gate was white and blue and waiting.

“East road.” Tom muttered. “He moves quick.”

“So do I.” Jory said, and put heels to the horse and was away, the spare mount trotting at his knee, the prints he left behind already filling with light snow.

Ned climbed the steps to the wall-walk and stood until Jory was a small stitch in a long white cloth and then nothing at all. The wind found its accustomed places under his cloak and he let it. He touched the inside of his doublet where Jon’s letter lay and found its edge with his thumb, like a man finds the hilt of a knife to make sure it’s still there.

He did not pray to the Seven. He did not pray, not really, to the old gods either. He stood with the bleeding tree and the sky and the cold and he thought: Live long enough to be angry with me, boy. Live long enough to come home and shout in my face and tell me I made the wrong choice. Live long enough to put a letter in my hand and make me read it twice.

Below, the yard resumed the sounds that meant a house was still a house; water poured in a pail, a boy laughed because a dog had stolen his glove, Ser Rodrik berated a shield for not holding still while a boy mended it. In the hall, Catelyn would turn a page and write a number. Robb would redo a strap because the first time hadn’t been good enough. Arya would mark the bark of a godswood beech with the point of her stick, practicing letters with slashes. Sansa would practice sitting so beautifully still it looked easy. Bran would tell Rickon that Jon was hunting and would come back with a story big enough to climb.

The letter warmed against Ned’s side. He let it. He stood until the cold took from him what it could take without being paid back, then turned away to set the ravens on their road and the house to its day.

Chapter Text

Regret is a poor map. Rest, drink, then draw the road again.

—J.S., Things That Work (And Why), “On Travel”

The morning had the taste of iron to it. The kind you get from a nicked lip you keep worrying with your tongue. Jon walked the rutted road where sledges had worn two dark truths through last night’s thin sugaring of snow. Beeches leaned in small, crooked congregations along the ditches, their grey arms full of nothing. He kept his cloak tight across his chest because a small white life lay under it, breath warming the wool in slow, steady puffs.

The pup woke with a yawn that was mostly pink mouth and not much sound. He nosed at the leather thong Maester Luwin had cut for him last night in Jon’s head, because Jon’s head was where such gifts existed for now. The pup’s nose was cold when it found the inner seam of Jon’s tunic and pressed there like a question.

“Hush, then.” Jon said softly. “You’ll get your share when we stop.” He did not say “Ghost” aloud on an open road; the name sat behind his teeth like a sweet he didn’t want to share yet.

He’d eaten yesterday’s bread in long, unthinking bites and had half a heel left. The water skin at his belt had gone slushy where it rode outside his cloak to leave room for the pup. His feet had learned new aches as the sky had grayed, old blisters trading places with new ones like bored sentries changing posts. In the little book he had begun to call his Field Book, because names make things behave, he had written: Wind NE, road hard, feet sore. Bread ½, water cold. Pup sleeps.

With the sun up properly, his leaving looked different than it had in the dark. There had been courage in the cold, and clarity in the way a gate opens and a road presents itself. In the daylight, courage turned into a kind of ache behind his ribs and clarity had edges he hadn’t seen. Perhaps he had run. Perhaps he had only been what Lady Stark said he was: selfish. Perhaps he should have chosen The Wall and let his uncle teach him how to live inside a duty that had shrunk to fit a smaller man than the songs sang. Perhaps he should have chosen The Citadel and learned to move his hunger into books until his sword arm forgot wanting.

He had not wanted to be the lever that cracked his father’s house.

He stopped just long enough to tuck the pup higher under his cloak so the little ribs didn’t take the wind head on, then started again. A man makes his doubts walk if he doesn’t want them nesting.

The sound of hooves came into the morning the way a thought comes into a mind that’s been trying not to think: slow, measured, saving the horse. Not a patrol clattering in to make a point, not a lordling hoping his speed would make a story. A steady, careful coming.

Jon stepped off the road so as not to make trouble he didn’t have to make. He drew his cloak tight across the small white face in case the rider was a kind of man who would attack a lone boy and what appeared to be a white dog.

The horse was a brown garron, shaggy and sensible, with breath like a baker’s oven. The rider was Jory Cassel, who slowed as he approached.

“Morning, Jon.” Jory said, and the words sat down like a man who knew you’d saved him a place near the fire.

“You shouldn’t have come.” Jon said, because that was the first stone his pride had ready to throw.

“Then I wouldn’t be here.” Jory said, as he got down off his horse. He looked at Jon first, then at the bulge under the cloak that moved like a very small tide. “You’re freezing. Step off with me, there, lee of the beeches.”

They left the road and found a shallow cup behind a stand of beeches where the wind shrugged and went elsewhere. Jory didn’t tie the garron because a Winterfell horse knows a Winterfell hand and will stand if asked and if the world is not ending. He had another horse behind him on a short lead, a black garron with a clean eye and a back that looked like a promise of not-hurting. Jon knew the horse; he had rubbed that black coat down on long evenings when there was more energy in him than sense.

Jory shrugged his own cloak off and set it in a quick wind-break along two low branches, then took a skin from beneath it that steamed when he pulled the stopper.

“Hot water.” He said. “Not much, but it’s better than nothing. Drink, and then talk.”

Jon hadn’t known how much he wanted something warm in him until he had it. He drank and felt the heat travel along a small careful road inside him, past his throat, down the hollow of his chest, spreading like a low fire that knew how to behave. Jory handed him two strips of dried meat and an apple, then knelt and held out his hand where the cloak bulged.

“You want to show me your secret?” He asked the bulge, not Jon.

Jon eased the cloak back. The pup’s red eyes looked at the new man and decided he was no danger. The white head cocked; the pink tongue appeared; the little paws tested the world one at a time.

“Wolf pup.” Jory said at once, not like a man guessing but like a man confirming something simple. “Not a dog. You can smell the difference, if you’ve stood near both. That clean wild stink.”

“He found me.” Jon said, and told the short story in short sentences because it felt like breaking a thing if he used too many words. “She-wolf. On the rise. She pressed him to my boot and then went back into the trees. Didn’t growl. Didn’t… do anything except decide.”

Jory nodded, slow as winter. “Sometimes a dam is sick or hurt. Sometimes she knows she can’t keep them all breathing. I’ve seen a hind leave a strong fawn where a crofter would find it. Once, a bear sow brought her cubs to a shepherd’s pen and put her back to the door, stood there as if she meant to hold the night out with her spine. When a creature with more sense than most men chooses, we pay attention.”

Jon stroked the soft skull between the pup’s ears. The head leaned into his palm as if that were a thing it had done before. “He chose me.” Jon said, almost to himself. “Before I knew I could be chosen.”

“Then you pay the choice back.” Jory said. “Meat. Warmth. Sense. When he is big enough and ready he will set off to find a mate and make his own pups. You name him?”

“Doesn’t seem right nor smart to name a creature that you cannot keep.” Jon said back, even though his mind said Ghost.

“Aye, it will be hard to see him go when he’s ready. But he might not be ready for many moons. It’s ok to name a new friend and miss him when he is gone. But he will remember you and he will stop by when you are near.” Jory said, as he reached out to pet the pup.  

“Ghost.” Jon softly named. 

“A good name.” Jory agreed as Ghost yawned again and fell asleep with the perfect arrogance of babies and kings.

“Now talk.” Jory said. “Eat while you’re at it. Men talk sense with food down.”

Jon chewed, because he had been told to and because the meat gave his jaw something to do besides clench. The words came, not in a rush, but as if they had been standing in a line and had decided to behave. He spoke Catelyn’s ultimatum without adding vinegar to it; she had poured enough herself. He spoke Ned’s response without making the man smaller or bigger than he was. He spoke of the two choices, Wall or Citadel, and how both felt like rooms where the door would be closed behind him. He said Ser Rodrik’s name and the way the word “squire” had sounded like a rope lowered into a hole when you don’t know how deep the hole is. He said Luwin’s chain and Luwin’s “no cages” and did not say what name had thrashed in his chest in the rookery, because you do not put a match near a dry barn when you are trying to keep a farm.

“I didn’t want to be the reason the hall broke.” He finished, because that was the part that had sat behind his tongue since he had left the gate. “If I didn’t choose, then it was going to be chosen for me. If I refused to leave, then Lady Stark would have taken my siblings and left. Winterfell is their home. They deserve to be there. Father deserves to have his children and wife in his home. My only choice was to leave, I thought maybe it would be better for me to be on my own. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was just running.”

Jory had the kind of face that listens without looking like it pities you. “You didn’t run.” He said simply. “You chose not to swear away a life you are too young to give. That’s a kind of courage. If you had chosen The Wall, you’d have served. You’d have been good at it. But The Wall is a grindstone. Put a boy to it at two and ten and he’ll be an edge by eight and ten, and a stub by twenty and five. If you had chosen The Citadel, you’d have learned their links faster than most. But they take a boy who likes both hands full and ask him to tie one behind his back. There’s nothing dishonorable in either, but not all honorable houses are homes.”

Jon looked down at his hands. They were not big hands, but they were sure when they wanted to be. They had made small things work in large ways and had broken soap when he had gripped it too hard in the bath.

“Maybe I ran.” He said anyway, because he had to let that thought stand in the air to see if it would stay or fall.

“If you’d ran, you’d have taken a horse.” Jory said mildly, and the corner of his mouth moved. “As it is, I caught you on day two because your pride wouldn’t sit a saddle.”

Jon tried to smile and made a face that felt like one. “I didn’t have a horse to take.”

“You do now.” Jory tipped his head at the black garron standing patient a few yards off, steam rising from his hide in small faithful puffs.

Jon looked. He knew the horse’s smell and the way his ears twitched when a fly was near and there were no flies. The sight of him made something in Jon unclench. “He’s not mine.”

“He is if you stand on him long enough. And he is the horse that your father gave to you when you were old enough to ride. Did you know that horse was a stallion that Lady Lyanna’s horse Winter gave birth to?” Jory asked. 

“I didn’t know that. I remember Winter died when I was six. It made Father very sad.”

“It made a lot of us sad. Winter was the last piece of Lady Lyanna that we had. Her colt was all that was left. Everyone thought he would gift him to Robb, but he gave him to you once you were old enough to sit on him. Still to this day he does not have a name, because we all have been waiting for you to name him.”

“I did not know he was mine to name.” Jon said, feeling a bit badly that a horse had been alive for six years and did not have a name. 

“He’s always been yours. I think it’s time you name him.” Jory said with a kind smile. 

“Phantom.” Jon said without pause and it was clear he had named the horse a long time ago, but he had never dared to say it out loud. 

“Phantom and Ghost, are you trying to tell me something?” Jory teased and Jon couldn’t help the small smile.

“Maybe the world is trying to tell me something.”

“Perhpas you can tell me what your plan was. Torrhen’s Square is two hundred and thirty miles, twenty days by foot, assuming you do not come into any problems. I hope you at least had a plan.”

Jon looked back at the road, which had been a friend because it was simple: put one foot in front of another, and the world changes. “I thought to earn my beds.” He said, because saying it made it real. “Fix small things that make big differences. Learn. Read. Write to my father. Write to Ser Rodrik. I’m not trying to hide, just… find me.”

“You’ll still earn your beds.” Jory said. “You’ll just arrive at them with more of your skin left. We will use your head and your hands before your feet. We’ll call it wisdom and not laziness.” He stood and poured a little hot water into his palm, then offered it to the Ghost’s nose so the smell would be paired with comfort. Ghost sniffed and licked and fell asleep again as if he had just performed hard labor.

“I’m to go with you. Your father didn’t order me, but he did ask and I agreed. Wherever you go, I go. I’m here to protect you, to help train you with your sword and to be there should you need anything. One does not have to travel alone to find themselves. Sometimes having a companion makes the travel easier.”

“Winterfell is your home. You shouldn’t have to leave it, especially not for me.” Jon said. He couldn’t imagine having Jory travelling with him. That wasn’t fair to the man. He should be back in Winterfell guarding his father and being with his uncle. 

“You made a choice to leave. I made the same. We travel together, whether you like it or not. Together, we will figure out who you are and see where fate has you ending up. We can always visit and we can always write the ones we love.”

Jon’s throat did that raw thing it had done in the corridor when he had put the letter under the direwolf carving. “Father, he didn’t get to say goodbye.” He said, and the words hung between them like a rung on a ladder.

“He sent me.” Jory said. “That’s a kind of goodbye, and a kind of hello. He chose to keep Winterfell whole. Now he chooses to keep you whole. Men do both kinds of choosing when they can.”

Jon nodded because if he had spoken he might have said something the wind would have carried to a place in him he wasn’t ready to visit. He stood. He had to, or he would sit again and then night would find him under a beech that didn’t care.

Jory looked at his boots, which had the beginning of new rub on the right heel. “We’ll fix that when we arrive at Torrhen’s Square.” He said. “For now, mount and see how far we get before night falls.”

Jon nodded and they quickly loaded up onto their horses. Phantom took Jon’s weight with the small forgiving grunt of a horse that knows boys become men in the saddle and there’s no use complaining about it. Jon’s legs remembered their place quicker than his pride would have liked. He gathered the reins loosely and set his hand where the leather couldn’t bite. The world rose under him; the road looked less like a demand and more like a suggestion he could answer better.

Jory swung back onto his brown garron with that same unshowy grace. “We go at a smart walk.” He said. “Save the horses for when we need a trot. We’ll make a dry camp an hour before dusk, far enough off the road to not get trampled by fools who ride after dark. I’ll snare if I can; you’ll fix whatever’s broken at the postern of sense in my head. We’ll take work where we find it, winch, well, ledger, fence. You know the rule.”

“Be useful.” Jon said.

“And be true.” Jory added, as if completing something Luwin had begun.

They eased out from the lee of the beeches and back onto the road. Phantom flicked an ear and set into the posture of a horse who is not in a hurry but who believes in destinations. 

“Jory.” Jon said, after a time in which only the tack talked. “Lady Stark said…” He stopped, because repeating the words might carry them into the parts of him that had decided to work instead of bleed.

“I know what she said.” Jory answered, not unkind. “And if she didn’t say it, I can hear it in how she looks. You don’t owe her your life because she can’t forgive another’s choices. Your job isn’t to heal anyone’s hurt by ruining your own.”

Jon breathed out and watched the breath go away from him instead of back into him. “What if I’m wrong?”

“Then we make it right on the next mile.” Jory said. “That’s what roads are for.”

They settled into the work of moving. The road gave them itself in stretches, hard, clean, promising, and then reminded them what kingdom they lived in with drifts that hid hollows and patches of ice that had been sanded with ash but were still slick under the pretense. When the wind came head-on, Jory put his horse a little to windward so that Jon could learn to ride within a shelter that looked like two horses making a choice rather than one man being protected. Ghost slept and woke and slept again; once he decided that Jon’s thumb was a thing to test his teeth on and received a patient “no” for his trouble, which he accepted because the voice that said “no” was the same voice that had said “hush,” and consistency is a kind of love.

Near mid-day they saw a cart stuck cock-eyed where one rut had turned to soup over a spring that didn’t know it was supposed to be frozen. The carter swore at the wheel as if it could be shamed into traction. Jory looked at Jon without turning his head. Jon sighed because he had said “Be useful” and the world had heard him.

They reined in. Jon swung down and tied Phantom to a scrub hazel, then rolled his shoulders and set his hands to the cart’s tail. “You need a wedge under the near wheel.” He said to the man, who had the look of someone who had been swearing for long enough to think swearing counted as a plan. “And a plank to spread the weight. Do you have a plank?”

“Plank?” The man said, as if Jon had asked whether he had a sept in his pocket.

“Take the lid off your chest.” Jon said, not impatient, only practical. “Or a side from your crate. We’ll put it back with pegs. The plank keeps your wheel from cutting a trench to nowhere.”

Between them, they lifted the chest lid free, wedged the near wheel, and rocked the cart with a shove timed to Jory’s horse taking a step in harness to the tail. The wheel climbed the wedge, bit the plank, and came free with a sucking sound like a stubborn cork. The carter made a noise that might have been gratitude and might have been relief; he pressed two small copper stars on Jon, who tried to refuse and then thought of Field Book pages and accepted.

“Thank you.” The man said, glancing at the white face under Jon’s cloak and deciding he had not seen it. “Helpful northern lads, they say.”

“They do like to say things.” Jory murmured as they rode on.

They made dry camp as promised, an hour before the light forgot them. Jory showed Jon how to sink three short sticks at angles and drape a cloak so that the wind went up and over and left the ground alone. Jon showed Jory how to keep a small fire’s smoke thin by feeding it with split sticks instead of hunks. They split the last of the bread heel and the rest of the dried meat; Jory whistled a rabbit out of a thought and turned it into stew that tasted like a better day because it had hot in it.

Jon wrote by what would generously be called light, the Field Book on his knee again: Helped carter: wedge + plank. Take lid, peg back after. Do not swear at wheels. It doesn’t help. Ghost hand-fed, looks to me first. Jory’s wind-break works. Distance to TS: still far.

They banked the fire and slept in turns because it is foolish to trust the world to behave just because you are tired. When Jon’s turn came to lie down, Ghost circled once on the folded blanket and arranged himself directly across Jon’s boots, pinning his feet like a small white rock. It should have been inconvenient. It felt like a decision the night had made for him.

The road waited in the morning the way roads do: not impatient, only there. Jon woke with his feet warm and his doubts quieter. The horses blew frost off their faces and looked at him as if to say that a day doesn’t walk itself.

“Up.” Jory said, cheerful without cruelty. “We’ve twenty days of road if we limp, three if we move like men who aren’t interested in wearing their feet to bones. Let’s choose the better story.”

Jon smiled without having to make himself. “Let’s choose the better story.” He echoed, and put his hand to Phantom’s withers, and mounted, and felt the world give just enough under him to be kind.

Chapter Text

Start small; make one hinge swing easier. If the door matters, it will tell you.

—J.S., Things That Work (And Why), “On Work-for-Board”

Torrhen’s Square looked like a place that had learned to be practical about winter. The curtain wall wasn’t grand; it was thick. The moat wore a crust where the cold had taken its first bite and then thought better of finishing the meal. The banners on the towers were more fox-brown than green from years of sun, and the yard inside smelled of peat smoke, horse, and boiled stew in the best way.

The sergeant at the gate had his mitts off before they were close enough to see his eyes. “Lord Tallhart’s compliments.” He called down. “Raven came three dawns ago. Your room’s made and the stew’s hot.”

Jory raised a hand in answer and rode them under the raised portcullis at the sensible pace of a man who did not mean to be a story. Jon eased Phantom to a walk and felt Ghost shift under his cloak to look at the new place through the slit of wool he left for him. The pup’s nose quivered, taking a census: horse, smoke, unfamiliar dog, meat, men.

A man with a good coat and good boots and a face the years had decided to carve slowly came down the steps from the keep. Jory and Jon both dismounted as Lord Tallhart approached. He didn’t waste the words he had. He took Jory’s forearm in a grip that said he had measured the Cassels and liked the result, then looked at Jon without looking past him.

“Stark’s word weighs more here than iron. He says you are a good lad.” He said. “Eat, sleep, earn. That’s all I ask.”

Jory bowed his head with the easy dignity of a man who remembers why he carries a sword. “My Lord.”

“Jon.” Jon said, because he felt it would be fairer to use the name himself before anyone else did. “My lord.”

Tallhart’s eye flicked to the bulge under Jon’s cloak. “Found your friend, did you Jon?” 

“A wolf pup. I’ll keep him close and away from your people, My Lord.” Jon said, a bit worried now that he might not be allowed to keep Ghost with him. 

“The mother left him before she wandered off. He’s too young to hunt still. He mostly stays tucked into Jon’s cloak. He’s a good pup.” Jory added, because his word would hold more weight then Jon’s. 

“Keep him under control. And be careful with him at night if you let him out. We got wolves in the area, and if they smell you on him, they could rip him apart.” Lord Tallhart warned.

“I’ll keep him close, My Lord. Thank-you.” Jon said with a kind smile. 

“Pups teach responsibility. It’s a good thing for a young lad to have.” Lord Tallhart said before he continued. “We’ll make this simple.” Tallhart pointed neatly: “Guards’ loft for Cassel. Servants’ quarters by the stables for Jon. Coin for the guard, posted to the east tower and mornings in the yard as you please; we’ve lads who need setting to rights. Bed and board for the boy, hostler Malk will have the stables for you; odd jobs earn bonuses. Maester Colren expects you both this evening. He likes to look a man in the eye before he decides to trust him with his paper.”

“Yes, My Lord.” Jory said again, as if the words were good to practice.

Tallhart’s mouth moved the smallest amount, which might have been a smile trying not to be noticed. “Off you go. Before the stew is only a memory.”

The stew was very much alive when they found it; thick with barley and turnip and a piece of fat that Jon would have called meat if he had been less honest. It was hot. That was the important part. Jon ate until the bowl looked like a place where stew had once lived and then licked the spoon because the inside of his cheeks had decided they could not be wasteful. Ghost took his share in small bites from Jon’s fingers, sitting politely with the kind of polite that is mostly just being tired and trusting.

The servants’ quarters by the stables were a long, low room where pallets lay in two careful rows and the straw had been changed recently enough that it didn’t scratch with the same old stories. Jon set his bundle by a spot near the end where he could get out and in without stepping on anyone. He unrolled the blanket that had decided to be his and made a small bed for Ghost between his boots and the wall, out of the way, inside the circle of his body. Jon took a moment and just sat down petting Ghost. It hadn’t really hit him until this very moment that everything was going to be different. He knew it would be for himself, and he accepted that as he left. And truly, it wasn’t all that different for him. The bed was the same, the jobs were the same. Being ignored was the same. 

However, it would be completely different for Jory and Jon felt a deep sense of guilt over it. Jory was here because Ned had asked him to go after Jon, to be with him. Jory had grown up in Winterfell. He was a leader, he was the Head of the House Hold Guard. He had a high standing. And now he would be just another guard, in a crowded room instead of his own, with just a few things to his name. Jory was essentially starting all over again and he would be in every Keep they traveled to. Jon felt bad about it. He knew he would need to speak to Jory again to make sure he understood that he didn’t have to stay with him. That he would be ok on his own. 

“Come on, Ghost. Let’s get to work.” Jon said, as he picked up Ghost and headed out to find the stables. He would have Ghost down soon, he just wanted to make sure Ghost stayed with him until they both got a better idea of the people and the way everything was laid out in the Keep. 

Malk the hostler had a face like a wall that has stood through several sieges and learned which stones fall out first. “You the Snow?” He asked, and squinted at the white muzzle as if daring it to sneeze.

“Yes, Sir.” Jon said. “I’m here to work where you’ll let me.”

“Where I’ll let you.” Malk grunted, and handed him a rake. “You start by making friends with the least grateful beasts in the world. That way nothing that comes after will disappoint you.”

It turned out the least grateful beasts in the world were the water troughs. The ice had grown a skin at the edges and then a skirt in the lip where the trickle from the spill stone had frozen again and again until you could skate a thumbnail along it. Jon learned how Malk liked it done: break the skin, haul the big chunks to the muck yard so they didn’t refreeze in the mud, clear the spill stone without cracking it, lay a small branch so the drip broke into drops that didn’t sheet and make a rink of the whole yard. Tib, the stable-lad, watched with the wary curiosity of a boy who had learned that new people sometimes made more work.

“You keep him close.” Tib said, eyes on Ghost.

“He will. I swear.” Jon said, as he could see the young lad was a bit scared of Ghost. Not that Jon could blame him. The deep scar that was on his cheek looked a lot like a dog bite.

Tib nodded like a man twice his age. “Good. The kennel bitch gets testy with strangers and I’d sooner not find out whether she’s brave enough to testy a wolf.”

“Wolf pup.” Jon said, and Tib’s mouth made a shape that might have been a smile if it had had more practice.

The first day, Jon kept to small fixes. He found the tack room and discovered it was where bits and reins went to forget who they were. He told himself the names he’d given things in the Field Book, order makes the world behave, and set to sorting what could be sorted. With a scrap board and four nails, he fashioned a peg rail; with a bit of chalk he labeled the pegs by size the way Maester Luwin had taught him to label drawers. When Malk came to fetch a bridle for a big-mouthed gelding and found a bridle where a bridle ought to be, he grunted once, which in hostler meant “I will not be angry about this.”

At the hayloft, the lift rope had been running on its own impatience for so long it had burned grooves into itself. Malk had been planning to cut the frayed end off and tie a new knot, which would have meant losing precious feet from a rope that was already short for the work. Jon ran his hand along the lay and felt where the damage was worst. “Turn it end-for-end.” He suggested. “So the good length takes the bite.” Malk sniffed at the idea, as men who have been doing a thing a long time will sniff at a boy’s suggestion, but he let him try. They rubbed tallow along the new working section and Jon tacked on a small wooden cheek where the rope ran over the edge of the loft so it stopped biting the beam. Tib loaded a bale and pulled; the rope sang its rough song instead of screaming. Tib looked impressed in spite of himself.

That night, after Jory had finished making guards into something closer to what their pikes deserved and the stew had done what was required of stew on a cold night, they climbed the tower to Maester Colren’s workroom.

Colren was built like a peat stack in winter; squarish, reliable, smelling faintly of smoke. His chain shook soft when he moved, and his robes had a deeper brown in their folds as if peat had dyed the cloth from within. The room was a lesson: iron nodules from the bog in one basket; a tray of salt weights on a cord; a map on the wall annotated with a spider’s handwriting; water levels, fords that failed suddenly in thaw, places where a man with more courage than brains had tried to cross and left a cart for the bog to eat.

“Cassel.” Colren said, and shook Jory’s hand like a man shaking another man’s tools to see if they rattled. “Snow. Maester Luwin speaks very highly of you. Says you are a lad who loves to learn.” He said, and looked Jon over in the way that doesn’t miss a thing and doesn’t make a boy into a frog on a table. His gaze paused where Ghost’s nose peeked from the cloak’s shadow. “And your companion.”

“Ghost, a wolf pup.” Jon said carefully.

“Was left by his mother on the road. Didn’t see the mother myself, just left her pup at Jon’s feet and went back into the trees.” Jory added.

“That happens from time to time. Either the mother is not able to care for the pup or the pup is unable to keep up with its mother and siblings. Let me look.” Colren said, and sat on his stool so the looking would happen closer to the floor, where the truth of small things often was. Jon eased Ghost out and laid him on his lap. Colren’s hands were large, steady, clean. He set fingers under an ear to see its set; pressed a thumb to a paw to feel the pads; looked at the dewclaws; parted the fur at the chest to see how the ribs ran; lifted a lip with a care that said I do not fear your teeth, but I respect them.

He didn’t announce it. He simply spoke the truth into the room as if it had been there the whole time. “Not a common wolf.” He said. “Direwolf.”

Jon’s heart did the thing where it tries to be in two places at once. Jory’s eyes flicked to the door and back again, measuring danger as men in his trade will.

Colren’s voice didn’t rise. He reached across the table and slid the map aside to set a small circle of quiet between them. “The first clue is how large his paws are. Wolf pups are very similar to dogs. The size of their paws should be close to that of a hunting dog or a sledge dog. These are twice the size. Then you add in the shape of the head, the length of his legs, it’s easy to see he is a direwolf. A very rare one at that given his pure white coloring and his red eyes. My best guess is that he is an albino and that could very well be why his mother left him. She could have rejected him because of it.”

“The mother was big, but I’ve never seen a wolf in front of me before. I thought it was normal.” Jon said, as he tried to take all of this in.

“Direwolves haven’t been on this side of The Wall in two hundred years. How did the mother get here?” Jory couldn’t help but ask. 

“Walked around it.” Colren said with an easy smile and Jon had to fight the laugh that threatened to be released. “Men cannot read the minds of animals. Though, we try to predict what they will do, you just never know when one will change the rules on you. Little Ghost here is definitely a direwolf.” 

“I’ve been treating him like he is a normal wolf. Should I be doing something different with him?” Jon asked, wanting to make sure he was taking proper care of Ghost. 

“No, you seem to be doing fine with him. He’s too young to hunt, so he needs meat for his diet. You need to socialize him. Wolf pups, once they get used to being around a human, that’s it for them. He’ll be too used to your company he won’t want to be in the wild alone, at least not for long. Once he’s older and bigger, he might go a day or two in the woods hunting before coming back, but he won’t stay gone for long. It is best to train him a bit. He won’t sit and stay because you say it, but if he respects you then he will listen. He does need to be used to being around other dogs so he won’t hurt them. You should take him down to the kennels while you are here to play with some of the other young pups.”

“I get to keep him?” Jon asked, surprised because he was confident, like Jory, that Ghost would leave once he felt he was ready. 

“Until you or he dies. It’s best that you get him started on the right foot, especially if you are going to be travelling around different Keeps. He does not have to be a pet, but he can’t be feral either.”

“I’ll do what I can for him, Maester.” Jon promised. 

“I have no doubt of that. Now, Maester Luwin says you are a very smart lad that loves to learn and read. So I will make you a deal. You help me keep this place tidy and I will let you read any of my books and copy what you would like. I specialise in bog iron and northern preservation. Plus I have a naturalist’s eye for northern canids.”

“I would be honored, Maester Colren.” Jon easily agreed. 

They spent a bit of time with Maester Colren as Jon wrote letters to both his father and Ser Rodrik. Jory adding a little bit to each letter before they were sent off. Jon didn’t know how well any of this would go, but he did feel good to have Ghost with him. 

XXX

The week began the way good work begins: with the morning.

Jory had the guards in the yard by first light, when breath is a visible thing and men remember that being alive is an act they have to help along. He did not shout. He moved men into the shapes their weapons expected. His “pretty drills”, as a man with more mouth than balance called them, got ugly quickly enough to satisfy pride. Two-on-one, feet and hands and the place where swords meet the shield’s edge. The mouthy man wound up on his back with a shield on his chest and his dignity somewhere near his boots, and he laughed from the ground, which is the right way to lose. After that, the yard listened.

Jon’s mornings were stables. Water, hay, muck, check shoes. He learned that Malk called all horses by names that were not their names; “you,” “beast,” “idiot”, until you proved you were worth his knowing your true one. Phantom and Jory’s, Copper, didn’t care what Malk called them; they cared that the hay smelled right and the water wasn’t a skin of ice. Tib kept his distance from Ghost at first, then closer when he started to see that Ghost was really very young and no threat to him.

“Hand.” Jon told Tib, showing him the trick that had made Ghost look up with all attention. He balanced a bit of meat on his palm and waited. Ghost took it politely when Jon said “now” and did not nip. “Wolves can be trained like dogs, if you find them young enough.”

“I’ll remember.” Tib said, and the respect in his voice wasn’t for the wolf.

By midday, Jon’s hands had found their old itch to make things line up. The tack-room pegs weren’t a fix so much as a truce. The trough drip branch turned shin-biting ice into what water was meant to be. On the second day, he made a wet-sand bucket where Malk could drop hot nails without setting the floor alight; nobody praised him because nobody wants to admit the floor had been near to burning too many times, but the bucket sat in a useful spot and collected nails and that was praise enough.

On the third day, he looked at the manure run and saw not waste but a job half done. “You’re hauling it to the south wall anyway.” He told Tib and Malk. “Stake a frame, build a stack, cover it with burlap. The wind break will keep the heat. When the thaw comes, we can set a simple seed frame on the warm side and have greens when everyone else remembers that scurvy is not a story.”

Malk squinted. “You like making work for yourself.”

“I like work that pays twice.” Jon said, and that got another single hostler’s grunt, which was beginning to sound like a blessing.

He spent his free time with Ghost, getting him into the kennel to play with some of the other pups and the slightly bigger dogs. Things were going well on that front. The Kennel Master was very pleased to see Ghost, word had started to spread quickly that they had a direwolf in their mists. Everyone wanted to come and see Ghost, to pet him and give him some meat. Ghost was loving all of the attention and soon, he was walking beside Jon everywhere and not feeling like he needed to be carried. He got tired easily, but Ghost had no problem curling up in the stables on some fresh hay. 

At night, after eating dinner with Jory and some of the guards, Jon would go up and visit with Maester Colren until the wee hours of the morning, giving Jon only a couple of hours of rest before he was back at work. Jon spent most of his time tired, but the tiredness was well worth it. Maester Colren knew a lot about the Northern climate and what seemed to work best given how cold it could be for various things. He had plenty of maps and books that Jon was copying into his own book for keeping. Jon knew he was going to have to spend some of the coin he would earn to pick up some more parchment so he could make more books. He would like to have one just for maps. 

He had received a message from his father and Ser Rodrik. Those ones Jon kept close to him, so when he was feeling sad or lonely, he could pull them out and read them. He had even written to Maester Luwin, telling him about Ghost and what he had learnt so far. He was really looking forward to hearing what Maester Luwin had to say. Maester Colren was nice enough to let him know that if the letters didn’t arrive until after they had already left, he would forward them on White Harbor. 

It was on their fourth day when a larger problem found him. He went to the gatehouse to bring Colren his winch pin. The postern winch had been catching on the down-stroke since the year the forward tower had been re-roofed. Nobody had got around to fixing it; men get used to flaws the way they get used to aches. Jon turned the wheel and listened. He felt the stutter in his hands before he heard it with his ears. The pawl didn’t seat true; the pin had been drilled off by the smallest degree, enough to make the tooth complain.

“Don’t you go taking that apart.” The gate serjeant said from his stool, not unkindly, in the tone of a man who has watched boys improve things into needing three men and a smith.

“I won’t.” Jon said. He didn’t. He shaved a sliver from a bit of spoon handle with his knife and eased it in behind the pawl. “This will hold.” He said, turned the wheel, let the teeth catch and release, catch and release, until the stutter stopped being a stutter and became a rhythm. “But you need to redrill the pin true. Colren will tell you what size to make the new one.” He scratched DRILL TRUE into the wood with the point of his knife near the pin so no one would pretend to forget.

The serjeant watched him the way a man watches a boy fix a thing he himself had cursed for too long. “Huh.” He said, which meant more than it sounded like. “You speak to the steward about feed while you’re feeling bold? I swear the bins empty a day before we think they do.”

Jon liked problems you could see all at once. He walked with the serjeant to the feed-room and found what he expected: three bins, one open, one supposedly sealed for next week, one empty and ah-we-must-fill-it when we remember. Men like to imagine full because it feels like doing the work of becoming full. He took a slate and chalk, wrote across the top in block letters: A | B | C; below, days left. He drew a stroke for each day the kitchen measured out without opening the next bin; when they opened another, he erased a word and moved it along. He taught Tib the strokes. “We don’t guess.” He said. “We draw fear where we can see it. Fear gets smaller when it has edges.”

By the sixth morning, no one panicked in the kitchens. The women didn’t water the porridge to make it look like it had more in it. The steward, Harl, a man made mostly of counting and skepticism, passed the board twice, stopped on the third pass, and stood looking at it as if it had said his name. “You find us two days’ grain yesterday that wasn’t here the day before, boy?”

“I found you the truth of what you had.” Jon simply said.

Harl made a small sound. It might have been admiration in another man. “Trick worth a silver.” He said finally, and later, when Jon passed the buttery, Harl put two thin coins in his palm as if he’d been planning to deny it all day and then got tired. Jon thought of vellum and didn’t protest.

Evenings continued to go to learning. Colren used Jon’s hands to teach his head; weights in the palm, salt measured in pinches the same way for each man, not by fist. “You cure a pig with guessing.” He said. “You set rot loose where you meant to set dinner.” He showed him how to layer straw and ice and straw again in a low pit so that meat went to sleep properly for winter. He had Jon copy the bog map; a delicate, steady job that made a boy feel he was making the world walkable for someone who didn’t know how fat a bog gets when it’s had good rain. He let Jory drink peat tea and gave him nothing to do but rest his legs in a chair that had considered refusing him and then decided not to.

Colren’s specialty was practical miracles: iron that could be coaxed from mud if you treated mud as if it were worth your time; fish that could pretend to be spring in the middle of winter if you smoked it with the right wood and the right patience. He took Jon out to the smoke racks behind the kitchen on the third evening and showed him how to stack green alder and peat so that the smoke made a taste instead of a lecture. “White Harbor lives on its fish.” He said, and his eyes made a little blink that meant he knew where Jon’s road was bent. “Men who cure it right live better than men who pretend they don’t need to learn.”

By the fifth day Jory’s yard got sharper. That mouthy guard brought his friend the next morning to try the two-on-one again and wound up laughing harder because getting beat twice and laughing both times means a man understands where his pride belongs. Jory ran a short line of pike across the field and had them practice walking backward in a straight line, no man likes to walk backward; it makes the body think it is being foolish. “Pretty drills get ugly men home.” He said when a serjeant asked him what the point was. The serjeant nodded, which is the highest rank of praise a serjeant has for another serjeant.

On the sixth day, Lord Tallhart walked the yard the way good lords do when they want to see what their house thinks it looks like when it is working. He said little. He looked much. He paused at the hayloft and lifted the rope in his hand, felt the tallow, saw the wooden cheek where the beam would have eaten. He passed the tack-room and did not get lost. He stood in the gatehouse and put a hand on the winch and smiled at the carved DRILL TRUE as if someone had just told him a joke he had almost remembered. He went into the feed-room and stopped in front of the chalkboard. He stood there long enough that Harl shifted from foot to foot like a boy being told why a trick was a trick. Tallhart nodded once, which was the same as a cheer in some Keeps. Later, Harl found Jon by the troughs and put another coin in his hand. “You bought your bed twice.” He said gruffly. “Try not to start a legend in my yard.”

Jon didn’t want a legend. He wanted hinges that swung and boards that told the truth and feed that didn’t pretend to be more than it was. Every night he wrote in the Field Book until his thumb had a little ink line on it that didn’t wash off with the first cold water: Tack board—pegs at 3 widths; chalk rub; mark bridle size by tooth. Trough—drip branch prevents sheet ice; break skin early, haul ice to muck yard. Hayloft—rope end-for-end; tallow rub; add cheek. Nails—wet-sand bucket. Manure—frame, burlap, south wall; heat for seed frame. Winch—shim pawl; DRILL TRUE note; bring Colren pin. Feed board—A|B|C strokes = days; fear smaller when drawn. Salt weights; peat smoke; ice cellars: straw/ice layers; vent little, not none. 

Ghost grew the way some plants do, so slow you’d swear no change had happened and then all at once you are standing next to shade. His paws looked too large for him most of the time; his confidence fit exactly. He learned “no teeth on thumb” without heartbreak. He learned “close” with the help of meat and a boy who had decided that rules were a kind of love if you set them for something smaller than you.

It was the evening on the sixth night and Jon sat on his pallet with Ghost curled up beside him. He had pulled out Ser Rodrik’s and his father’s letters to read once more before turning in for the night. 

-Jon

I’m glad to hear that my nephew found you. I like knowing he is with you to help keep you safe. No one should travel alone, boring going on adventures with just yourself. If I was a younger man, I’d have gone with you. Let me know how it goes in Torrhen’s Square and where you go next. -Rodrik

Jon had written back letting the man know they would be moving on to White Harbor next. It was the next Keep within the North. Though, Jon had thought maybe they would go to Barrowton, but Jory quickly overruled him on that. Jon knew there was tension between Lady Dustin and his father, but he didn’t think with him being a bastard it would trickle down to him. That was something Jory was not willing to test. Jon was easily willing to agree. Jory was here to help guide him and protect him. If he felt it was best not to go, then Jon would listen. 

He opened his father’s letter next.

-Jon

It gladdens me to hear from you. To hear that Jory found you and you are safe. It breaks my heart to know that I did not get to give you a proper goodbye. That I did not get to make sure you were safe. I wish I could have gone with you. That I could be there to help guide you to yourself. Know that I will always be here for you. That I will always write to you. And no matter what, Winterfell will always be your home. You will always have my love. -Your Father

It warmed Jon’s heart to hear from his father. To hear that he wasn’t mad or disappointed in him. Part of the reason why Jon left the way that he did was because he feared what his father would think of him not choosing The Wall or The Citadel. It was a comfort to know that his father was ok with his decision, accepting of it. That he didn’t close the door to Winterfell to him. He still called it his home, even though they both knew he might never be able to return there. Jon would keep writing though and sending letters every stop that he made. He would make sure his father knew about his life so it felt as if he was there with him and Jon hoped he was making him proud.   

On the seventh morning the sky had a clear, cold look that says a road intends to be kind to you if you are kind to it back. Jory brought word from the tower that the weather would hold and that some carts were bound south toward White Harbor. “We can make good time.” He said. “If you still mean to go there.”

“I mean to go.” Jon said, and thought of fish cured properly and ledgers that told the truth and ships that could bring grain where grain had thought it couldn’t go. He thought of Lord Wyman Manderly, whom he had not met, and of letters that could be passed between houses where a boy was not a boy but a pair of hands that made other hands’ work quieter.

“It does not mean you have to though, Jory. You have a life and family back in Winterfell. You have respect there. A position. You do not have to give all of that up for me. I will be fine on my own.” 

Jory gave Jon a kind smile, as he went and sat down next to him on the pallet. “I have watched you grow from the moment Lord Stark brought you home. Despite your name, you are a Stark and I swore to protect all of House Stark. Aye, I have a life back in Winterfell, but a guard’s life is never stable, never secure. I knew at any given moment I could be leaving Winterfell for good. I made peace with that a long time ago. I do not mind being a travelling guard. I do not mind working in different Keeps and teaching different lads and men how to use a sword better. And I do not mind keeping you company. If things had ended differently and my father had survived the Rebellion, I might have been your guard from the start.”

“Why would you guard a bastard?” Jon asked, confused. 

“Because you are Lord Stark’s son, one he loves very much, your name does not change that.” Jory said with a kind smile. “I am not going anywhere. So make peace with that, just as I have.”

“I won’t keep asking if you are sure. As long as you promise to tell me should you change your mind.” Jon offered.

“That I can do.” Jory agreed. “Now come, it’s time to break our fast if we wish to be on our way.”

Jon agreed and he quickly finished packing up his few things before they headed out to break their fast. 

Lord Tallhart met them a little later by the south gate with the kind of farewell a man gives when he doesn’t mean it to sound like one. He held a small square of parchment folded and sealed in his hand. “For Lord Wyman.” He said. “Says you fix what breaks and write it down besides. Ser Cassel, you’ve been paid your hours. Steward has the tally.”

Jory took the tally and the coin and said. “My thanks, My Lord.”

Tallhart’s eyes went to Ghost, whose nose did its quick census of his boots. “Keep him close.” He said. “And if anyone gets the bright notion to make a story out of him with a sword, tell them Lord Tallhart says a sword makes a poor pen.”

“Yes, My Lord.” Jon said, and Ghost flicked an ear as if agreeing.

Maester Colren came to the gate with a small packet wrapped in linen: a salt measure, a scribbled smoke-rack sketch, and a scrap of the bog map with a ford circled and a note: “Safe in thaw.” The peat smell followed him like a cloak. He put two fingers to his brow in a gesture that some men call a blessing when they can’t quite bring themselves to say the word. “Draw your maps fair, boy.” He said. “And always stay curious.”

“I will, Maester.” Jon said. “Thank you for all of your help and your lessons.”

Tib came running with a bundle he had made himself, whether anyone asked him to or not. A folded bit of old blanket with a crude wolf stitched in the corner, and a slice of apple tucked in the fold as if that would travel better for the company it kept. He thrust it at Jon and then, embarrassed by his own kindness, tried to turn it into instruction. “For the pup. So he has a place that smells like a place he liked. And…” He looked at Ghost, dead serious. “Mind your teeth.”

Ghost sniffed the bundle and approved; he had strong opinions about blankets and loyalty.

The chalkboard in the feed-room read A: 3 days | B: sealed | C: full in Tib’s big careful strokes. Jon looked at it once more as he took Phantom’s reins. There is a particular kindness in leaving a place that now tells the truth to itself without needing you to stand and point.

“Road’s kind.” Jory said, as if the road needed reminding.

“White Harbor next.” Jon answered.

They rode out beneath the portcullis and into a morning that had decided not to test men unduly. Copper and Phantom breathed white; Ghost’s head tucked into the crook of Jon’s elbow under the cloak. Lord Tallhart’s nod followed them to the bridge. Maester Colren watched with his peat tea cooling in his hand, eyes on the ford marked on a map that now lived in a boy’s satchel. Tib waved with both hands as if one hand could not say enough.

The road south lay stiff and promising. Jon set down the day in his head before it had happened, the way he liked to, like a man ordering a bench of tools before lay-on. Be useful. Be true. Learn the way fish keep through winter. Learn the way ledgers speak without lying. Keep the wolf close. Keep the curiosity. 

Phantom set into his smart walk. Jory put the Copper a little to windward. The square, with its small swing of a gate that now worked as it ought, shrank behind them until it was a neat thought. The better story had its first chapter put away. The next waited where the sea breathed, and men called it White Harbor.