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CaveLeather There were hours when Jon Snow was glad of the bastard name.
This was one of them.
He filled the cup he had just emptied, took the bench again among the younger swords and squires, and let the summerwine sit on his tongue.
Sweet.
Fruit and heat.
It pulled a small smile out of him before he could stop it.
Winterfell’s Great Hall was a packed, breathing thing.
Smoke.
Roast.
Bread still hot from the ovens.
The grey walls wore the houses that had come to drink: the running grey wolf on white, the red flayed man of Bolton, Cerwyn’s battle-axe on silver, Tallhart’s three green sentinels on brown.
A singer worked a harp somewhere up the hall and threw a song after it.
Between the fire, the knock of cups, and men talking with their mouths full, Jon at the far end caught only the shape of the tune.
Lord Eddard’s thirty-fifth nameday had brought them to the tables.
The feast was about to stand up and be itself.
His brothers and sisters sat the length of the room away, among lordlings.
On nights like this Father allowed each trueborn child a single cup and watched the second one like a hawk.
No one counted a bastard’s cup among the serving men.
Jon had learned his head was as hard as most grown ones.
The boys at his elbow cheered every swallow and called for the next.
He let them.
Their talk was war and hunts and the women they swore they had had.
It was stupider than the high table and a good deal cleaner.
Lord Eddard went by with a knot of lords.
Robb wore the wolf’s colors, grey wool cut with white.
Theon Greyjoy came at his shoulder.
Robb found Jon and gave him a small, easy smile.
Theon looked through him.
That was not new.
Theon could live as Robb’s shadow and still find a Snow too low to see.
He was the Greyjoy ward, not a son.
He never let anyone forget which of those things Jon was.
Ser Domeric came after, Sansa’s hand on his arm.
She was thirteen, and the hall had noticed.
Auburn hair ran out of a net of small stones and kept running.
The girl Jon remembered had been all knees and lessons.
The one on Domeric’s arm would turn heads in any street that still had eyes.
She smiled up at the Bolton heir as they passed, pink and pleased.
Jon could not think of a girl in the North who would not.
Ser Domeric was trueborn to the Dreadfort, tall, black-haired, with a smile that looked as if it could cut paper and the pale skin highborns liked to keep.
Black silk.
Black boots.
A cloak of black satin.
The flayed man in red thread on his breast.
They called him the Bolton heir when they spoke to his face.
Behind it they tried the other name on their teeth.
The Flayer.
Jon found it hard to look away.
The eyes were deep water.
The rest of him had the habit of a man who expected the room to move first.
That, Jon thought, was what a king was supposed to look like before anyone put a crown on him.
The stories had gotten here ahead of the man.
Alone, he had opened the Lonely Hills and torn coal and iron out of a country no one else had wanted.
A few hundred swords at his back, and wildling bands in their thousands had come apart.
Hill clans that would not bend had learned to.
Near a hundred thousand broken folk ate because of it.
White Harbor’s ships hauled Bolton iron down the Last River and around the Shivering Sea into the realm, and came home fat with grain and coin.
Karhold, poor as a stripped bone, had looked at a neighbor’s plate and reached.
Evil was supposed to lose.
When the word came that the Karstarks had been broken and put to the mines, Jon had almost laughed into his cup.
Then, at Lord Eddard’s word, Ser Domeric had opened the cells.
That was rarer than iron.
Lords counted spoons.
This one had let a beaten house walk.
When the high seats filled, cups went up.
Names went around the fire.
The feast started in earnest.
Music lifted and ran the length of the hall like water finding stone.
Ser Domeric took Sansa into the open floor.
The talking died.
Lords who had been in the middle of their own importance forgot the next word.
The quiet turned Jon’s head.
Even the benches stopped.
Only the blind harper kept the tune, as if the rest of the world were his business and this were not.
Sansa moved as she had been taught and then better than that: slow at first, sure, chin high, each step set down as if the air had asked for it.
Jon had not known his proper sister kept that in her.
He could see she liked the man who had her hand.
That was not a private sickness.
The house had caught it.
Father had more than once told his children to watch Ser Domeric if they wanted to know what a knight was for.
Lady Catelyn, opening a southern silk, had said a girl could do worse than a good-son with manners like that.
Robb treated him like a second pair of shoulders and took his sword-questions and his war-questions as if they were owed.
Jon liked him for a plainer reason.
The man was not like the rest of the high table.
He told stories that did not end where northern stories ended.
Once, he had given Jon this one.
Far east, he said, past Asshai-by-the-Shadow and the Jade Sea, a servant of the Lord of Light had walked toward the Lord’s own country to bring back a book of fire.
The road put eighty trials in front of him, and more.
Some were teeth.
Some were kinder than teeth.
Things in the dark believed a blessed man’s flesh would buy them a life that did not end, so they hunted him to eat him.
Women with arts in their hands tried the other door.
A queen with a fat kingdom and a face to match it asked him to stay and be warm forever.
He walked on.
Jon had frowned and asked the only question that seemed decent.
Did the man not want women?
Did he not want gold?
Ser Domeric had shaken his head.
“He was going to the Lord’s country.
Beside that, a queen is a cup of wine.
Temptation only works on a man who has not already chosen.” “And where is the Lord’s country?” The smile then had been small and unkind to easy answers.
“Where you point your will,” Domeric had said.
“That is the only country a god ever built.” The dance ended.
The hall found its noise again.
Hands.
Younger sons and daughters who could not sit still any longer took the floor.
The nameday climbed.
CaveLeather