“Please don’t.
Ser Domeric, I didn’t come to hurt you.
I came to talk about my pet.” The hell of a way to open a talk.
The rat on the cat was larger than a common rat and still nothing he could not have put under a boot.
What worried him was the other half of her: a working like the flame that unmade a man.
He had no wish to make an enemy of a sorcerer who had not yet shown him her teeth.
So he followed the courtesy she had put on the table.
“Then I will ask it plain.
Why did your pet walk into my mines, fight my guards, and leave me dead men?
I took it for an attack on the holding.” “I am sorry.” The white ears drooped.
“The working needed a stone.
She was hunting it and wandered onto your land.” The look did not have a lie in it.
In this shape, with this much already given, a lie would have been wasted breath.
“Then we have a misunderstanding.
I will have her released.
I did not use her badly.
I fed her.
She ate as if she meant to finish the hall.” “Thank you, Ser Domeric.
You are a reasonable man.
I knew you for a good one the first time I saw you.” The rat bent in a small, correct bow, the kind a well-taught child might offer a high table.
“You have seen me before.” “Of course.” She settled on the desk and put a paw to her cheek.
“Don’t take it wrong.
I was here before you were.
Three years past these hills were empty ground.
A wildling band lived in them, fewer than a hundred.
Then you came.
In less than three years you put more than a hundred thousand souls on this dirt.
That is a wonder.
It looks like magic.
The magic you made is stronger than the kind I study.” “You live in the hills.” That was the piece that mattered.
“My tower sits near your land.
I have watched the change and been surprised by it more than once.” “A tower.” The rat saw the question in his face.
“The place I work.
In Asshai a sorcerer raises one only if she has the strength for it.” Pride sat on the little skull as plain as the crown.
The look wanted praise.
“The tower keeps itself in a mist I lay.
That is why your men have not found it.” A mist over his own hills, and he had not known the woman in it.
The thing on his doorstep.
He had no clean word for how much that annoyed him.
“I heard my pet cost you.
This is for that.” She produced a bag of gold dragons from somewhere behind the cloak and tossed it.
The weight of it landed honest in his palm.
“It will not buy the dead back.
It may make the living sit a little easier.” On his word they brought the girl to the bedchamber.
Grease still stood on her face.
The white gown was a slick of it.
Her belly had gone round with the supper, and the burps kept coming.
A hundred men in steel closed the room.
Ser Wendel and Ser Jorah had them packed tight enough that the air had to ask leave.
Wendel flicked a look that meant: now?
Domeric shook his head.
The rat did not care about the steel.
A creature that calm had a door he could not see.
The mistake was named.
He would not pick a fight with a sorcerer for the pleasure of winning a room.
The rat drew a wand from nowhere and rapped it on the girl’s skull.
“Lost.
Greedy.
Do you know what it cost me to come and pull you out—” The girl went down on the boards and cried.
The rat stopped mid-blow, as if it had only then remembered whose skin that was.
“Forgive me, Ser Domeric.
The creature is enough to put a temper on anyone.” The white fur had stood up along her back.
“I understand.
Most people keep one that bites.” He shrugged.
He had seen the whole of it and did not pretend otherwise.
“The work is done.
It is late.
I will not keep you.” The rat had counted the new men in the door.
She made a farewell of both paws.
Under their eyes she took the girl into the shadow.
The dark twisted.
As it started to go, a card cut from a leaf came out of it and found the air.
“If you wish to see the tower, Ser Domeric, set this on the highest stone of the peak.
My guards will bring you the rest of the way.” The voice thinned.
The shadow went out.
He sent men through the room.
A guard found the wrongness first.
The boards came up.
Signs had been cut into the floor where the shadow had stood, the cuts packed with crystals.
A sending-circle.
That was how the rat had come.
Wendel rubbed his bare scalp and looked like a man catching a blow he had earned.
“My lord.
That was mine to stop.” “It was not.
The watch is trained for men.
Not for rats.
I did not see this coming either.” He let the breath go and raised his voice so the whole ring of steel would have it.
“Magic has come back.
The old powers will not stay in stories.
From this night I want every man in this hall to treat that as a fact.
I want your word on it.
After this, not even a rat walks in here unasked.” “Yes, my lord.” They went to a knee in rows.
“My lord.” Wendel was already offering the next thing.
“If this can happen, I should sleep across your door.” “I need a man at my shoulder.
It will not be you.
I will not listen to you snore.” “I could try the nose.
Perhaps that would stop it.” He meant it.
The fright had gone into him and stayed.
A sorcerer had walked into the lord’s bedchamber without a sound.
If Domeric died of that, the name that stuck to his chief sword would be the man who failed his lord.
In this country a name like that did not come off.
The Kingslayer still wore his.
Domeric rubbed his jaw.
His hours went into the books.
He needed someone whose work was the unexpected thing at his back.
Benita Antaryon.
The knife out of the House of Black and White.
“The maid I brought from Winterfell,” he said.
“Bring her.”