New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤 ✦ “What happened?” Cersei heard the boy’s scream and stared wide-eyed in panic.
“He fell.” Jaime whirled back from the window, snatched up his cloak, and threw it around himself.
“Quickly.
We have to go down.” “Who fell?” “Bran Stark, Lord Eddard’s second son.” “Damn it.” Cersei instantly lost her composure.
“Did he see us?” “No.
But we cannot take this lightly.
Hurry.
I have to go down first and stop that man of the Night’s Watch.” * * * Half a minute earlier, when Aeg parted from two passing guards and returned to the training ground in the old inner yard, Bran had already climbed from the roof of the guardhouse onto the outer wall of the First Keep.
He was moving sideways along a familiar “route” toward the Broken Tower.
Knowing he could not stop the boy, Aeg had shouted loudly on purpose.
He was not truly hoping Bran would obey.
He only wanted the pair inside the First Keep to react in time.
The first half of his plan succeeded, but the result did not unfold the way he had imagined.
From the old inner yard, he saw everything clearly.
This time, Jaime did not push Bran at all.
He had only shown his face at the window, and the sight frightened the boy so badly that Bran fell on his own.
* * * After a dull thud like a sack of rags hitting the ground, the boy lay still, eyes closed, unmoving.
The corn he had meant to carry to the top of the Broken Tower to feed the crows spilled from his pouch and scattered across the ground, yellow grains everywhere, bright and cruelly ironic.
Aeg stood beside the fallen boy, his thoughts in chaos.
Instinct told him to shout for help at once, but the Lannister twins were still inside the First Keep.
If the rescuers came and exposed their affair, his chance to leave the Wall would be finished.
Worse still, after all his efforts, he had not stopped Bran from falling.
Instead, he had dragged himself into the matter.
When the boy fell, Aeg had been shouting at him.
If blame had to be assigned, who bore more of it?
Aeg for distracting Bran, or Jaime for startling him?
An ordinary black brother had somehow caused the nephew of the First Ranger and second son of Lord Stark to fall from the First Keep.
What chance would he have of leaving the Wall once he returned?
The thought made Aeg’s blood run cold.
Footsteps sounded.
Jaime sprinted out from the entrance of the First Keep, raced to Bran’s side, and bent to check the boy’s breathing and heartbeat.
A moment later, he stood.
The careless ease had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a chilling light.
The Kingslayer seized Aeg by the collar.
If the two men had not been nearly the same height, he might have lifted him off the ground.
The proud, reckless Lannister spoke in a voice that nearly shook.
“Tyrion said you are the cleverest soldier he has ever met.
Then you should understand this: the boy fell on his own.
That is best for both of us.
Do you understand me?” Fell on his own?
Aeg had calmed down by then, and he quickly understood what Jaime meant.
Yes.
No one else had witnessed the full accident.
If Bran had fallen on his own, then at least until the boy woke, they did not need to argue over whose fault was greater.
But Aeg reacted just as quickly.
He could not accuse Jaime, but he also could not carry the blame alone.
“I understand.
Yes, he fell on his own.
But I am afraid no one will believe the word of a small soldier like me.” Jaime glared at him viciously.
When he saw that Aeg had no intention of backing down, he gave ground.
“I can testify for you.
But you will not drag me…
you will not drag Her Grace into this.” Aeg nodded at once.
“Of course.
Her Grace has nothing to do with this.” On any ordinary day, Jaime would probably not have bothered speaking a single word to an ordinary black brother like Aeg.
Today, however, he had unavoidably run into him while searching for a place, and now both men were implicated in Bran Stark’s fall.
Not speaking was no longer possible.
They quickly agreed on a shared account of the accident.
Once the brief exchange was over, Cersei emerged from the First Keep with a tense face, while Aeg left the old inner yard to call for help.
* * * No member of House Stark had suffered such an accident since Robert’s Rebellion.
Winterfell had seen nothing like it in years.
The castle erupted into chaos.
Guards hurriedly carried the boy back to the Great Keep on a stretcher and notified Lady Stark and Maester Luwin.
Everyone with any medical skill, including the healers who had come from King’s Landing, joined the effort to save him.
No one came out of the room until the king’s hunting party returned that evening.
By nightfall, Bran’s direwolf pup was howling outside the window.
All of Winterfell could hear it calling for its little master.
Aeg lay on the bed in his own room, tossing and turning.
Everyone knew Bran liked to climb.
Nearly every resident of Winterfell had worried over that troublesome boy at some point.
To Jaime and Aeg, who were entangled in today’s fall, it was a sudden and terrible problem.
To everyone else in the castle, it was only a fear finally made real: an accident.
Aeg was sick with tension, but in truth, no one suspected a lone man of the Night’s Watch.
Only after Eddard Stark returned to Winterfell did the lord of the house remember to summon the ranger who had first found his son after the fall and ask for details.
With the testimony of the two guards who had spoken to Aeg, as well as that of Ser Jaime Lannister, the Warden of the North soon frowned and waved him away.
It seemed Bran’s fall had brought Aeg no trouble at all.
But things were not that simple.
Aeg was genuinely afraid now.
Bran’s fall, as if ordained by fate, had made him begin to doubt the rules he thought governed this world.
✦ ✦ ✦ Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.