“-. 273 AC .-“
For a man who’d obviously intended his last question as rhetorical, Rickard Stark seemed to be taking far too much time following up on it. Maester Walys normally moved in on such instances with a non-sequitur. It allowed him to make a point of his own which, though barely tangential to the matter at hand, would nonetheless allow him to push and tug at his
own points that needed making. Often he even managed to make it seem like he was following through on points the young lord himself had made before, whether or not that was the case.
Considering that he’d just seen the man use that same technique on his demon son, however, Walys decided it probably wouldn’t serve him well in this case. Unfortunate. Silence fit him rather poorly now and here, when it wasn’t himself that imposed it.
That he swam in a tide of far too slowly dissipating fear wasn’t helping. At least he believed it was mainly fear. There was an undercurrent of… something which he wore even more poorly.
Fortunately, the maester was old hat at giving highborn their seeming concessions. “Setting up your next lecture, my lord?”
“I’m contemplating appearances,” Rickard replied, not taking the bait. Or perhaps taking it too well. “Books and songs and stories are chock full of warnings about unassuming creatures that will kill you when you get near. Yet none of them seem to acknowledge the one, big thing that undermines all of their parables.”
The undercurrent grew heavy. “Which is?”
“We are
men, not beasts.”
The undercurrent grew heavy and insistent
. “…I fail to see your meaning.”
“Don’t you really? I suppose I shouldn’t blame you, seeing as your chain lacks any antimony. Your predecessor though, I learned a surprising amount about the wilds from him. Among them was an interesting bit about something called warning coloration.”
“Ah,” Walys could see what he was saying, and the point taking shape. Somehow, though, it only made his strange disquiet stronger. “Animals that are foul, poisonous, thorny or otherwise difficult to kill and eat tend to advertise it to potential predators though conspicuous coloration, sounds, odours or other traits.” The maester gave Rickard Stark his usual, unimpressed look, hoping it masked the fretful way his true feelings churned inside him. “I hope your point is going to be better than ‘let’s judge books by their cover’ my lord.”
“People who use that argument are the same ones who conveniently forget that fable revolves around the
exception, not the rule.”
Translation: What are you, maester? An exception, or the rule? “The state of a book’s cover says more about what sort of people live nearby than its contents, but let’s not divert from the point.”
“You’ve yet to make one, my lord.”
“Warning coloration. It’s not just the troublesome beasts and critters that use it, now is it?”
Deflection failed. Walys wished he could claim it was unexpected. “… Prey mimicry,” He said when it became clear that it wasn’t just a rhetorical question this time. “Some animals will sometimes resemble one of the troublesome beasts closely enough to share the protection.”
Rickard Stark beheld him, eyes unreadable as they ever were. “It’s making me think about how people put on appearances. Nobles in the Seven Kingdoms drape themselves in velvets, silks, and samites of a hundred hues whilst peasants and smallfolk wear raw wool and dull brown roughspun. In Braavos it’s the opposite, according to everyone who ever sends words back from there: bravos swagger about like colourful peacocks fingering their swords, whilst the mighty dress in charcoal grey and purple, blues that are almost black, and blacks as dark as a moonless night. On the surface it might seem like it’s a difference in culture. But I have to admit I’m starting to wonder if perhaps there aren’t certain parties in Westeros who fancy that there isn’t much difference from things across the sea. Or that there
shouldn’t be.”
Walys sat back in his chair and smothered his impulse to reach up and rub at his neck wound. “I’m afraid you still haven’t made whatever point you’re making, my lord.”
“No matter how many nobles get themselves killed or disgraced due to how much they love to pretend they’re their house sigils, we are
men, not beasts. Proud airs aren’t all we can confect. It’s just as easily within our ability to pretend
weakness.”
Translation: Are you a grey rat or just a rat?
Fear pounded in his ribcage, but Walys smothered it with sheer indignation. Barely, but he managed. Did the young man really think he’d incriminate himself when
he’d yet to hint at what little he knew about Walys’ business? The maester made sure his silence conveyed the appropriate amount of vexation.
Rickard Stark didn’t seem particularly impressed, but he did break first. “Do you remember the first thing that happened upon your arrival to my castle?”
Or maybe break was the wrong word. “You gave me bread and salt.”
“Yes,” the man said, again with that long, unreadable gaze of his. Of all the traits of the young lord, that unbreakable facade was the one Walys had always hated. For the simple fact that Rickard Stark had never had to work a single day for it. If he’d at least have had to- “Did you ever wonder why I never followed up with the traditional maester swearing in ceremony?”
Even having built up to it, the question still surprised him. “… Sometimes in the beginning, not so much as the years went by,” the maester made no effort to hide his disbelief. “If you’re going to claim you’ve always suspected me of something or other, you’ll have a hell of a time convincing me, My Lord.”
“Oh no, that was just me being a conceited, mistrustful and bitter little shit.” Those… Those words had no business being said in such a bland, no-nonsense voice. “’You’ve such trouble trusting yourself, my boy,’ my father told me on his deathbed. ‘If you feel you can’t trust your own judgment, gild yourself in what trappings and rules you need to act by highest law.’ I had nothing but
contempt for you, Walys. For all you maesters and the Citadel that spawned you. I thought you all incompetent. Frauds and failures with too high an opinion of yourselves. If I’d taken you fully into my service then, if I didn’t let you abide under guest protections – if I didn’t impose the bounds of Guest Right on
myself – I’d have executed you at the first offense or hint of failure, no matter how minor.”
The admission was like a spray of snow on his bare skin. “You cannot mean…”
“You’d have been dead within the moon.”
Walys couldn’t entirely contain his reaction at the words. At the mild manner in which they were spoken. At the fact that even now he couldn’t read into the young lord’s gaze at all. He shuddered.
“Later, after I executed Cassel, my disparagement of myself was only reinforced. So I let things lie as they were. After that, the matter was buried under everything else I had to mind, which I already had trouble keeping up with due to how frail may will had gone. A lot of things slipped my mind all these years. For a long time, it was either work the day away or dwell on my failure as a man and a husband and father. I was in despair, then soul weary, then outright obsessive. That I
wasn’t wrong in my read of the Cassel situation is something I only learned about a year ago, more or less.”
Walys Flowers… almost didn’t know what to say to that. “Rodrik Cassel was a good man.” Almost. “An honourable knight, faithful and true.”
“Yes. Cassel was loyal. To his code, his beliefs and
then me. Just like you. Just like everyone like you.” Whatever indulgence or patience had lingered in Rickard Stark’s eyes dimmed almost entirely. Walys was surprised he was allowed to see through it. “It’s not the most standout realisation I’ve ever had, but it’s up there.”
The maester was suddenly acutely aware of the sweat coating his brow and pooling at the edges. “My order serves.”
“Yes.” Tap, tap, tap went the lord’s fingers drumming on the smoky blade of the sword in his lap. “The realm.
Then Winterfell.
Then me.”
The younger, gormless him would have disagreed. He’d also have missed his window of opportunity because of the inner panic he had to so frantically stave. “Lord Stark, double speak has always been something you wear poorly. Speak plainly if we’re to have any sort of peace.”
“I will do the former, for the latter can now never be.”
Maester Walys was taken aback, both at the reply as well as the bizarre feeling that they’d had this conversation before.
“…My lord, please. Say what you want to say.”
“It’s all in the vows themselves, Maester. Yours, not mine.”
Walys sighed, the put-upon mien coming upon him wholly naturally after so many talks that took similar turns in the past. “I think I can speak for both of us what I say neither of us has the patience for further games today. I know I don’t.”
“Perhaps you should, seeing as we are dancing around the proof that the North has perhaps changed much more than you sought.”
Feeling became fact on finally remembering when and why they’d had a conversation before. The undefinable disquiet underlying the dread he was holding in suddenly bubbled to the surface and he could see it for what it was. Uncertainty.
Uncertainty that he was even leaving that room alive.
“It’s a matter that has been heavy on my mind these past two moons.” Two moons. Two moons. Just two moons. He could still- “Your vows are as absolute as they are interpretable. The order of maester serves, yes, but whom? The realm.
Then the castle.
Then its lord and master.” Walys almost couldn’t suppress his reaction at hearing Rickard Stark repeating himself deliberately, however obliquely. “So long as I hold Winterfell you are bound by oath to give me counsel to the best of your ability, but not to the best of your
intent or, more importantly,
my intent. It’s made me wonder about accepting you into the household fully. The authority that would give you. To decide
for me and mine. Based on
your judgment and goals, rather than mine or my family’s. You maesters always end up knowing the affairs and the bodies and the family secrets of those you serve. But you have no incentive of solidarity to go with the enormous power that gives you. Compared with, say, the captain of my guards whose fate is intimately tied to my own, you maesters come as strangers and might leave for another position. You have no blood ties with the men you serve. Yet your authority has grown to near my own in places, our very wellbeing above all else. Sounds like it could make a mess of right and wrong and the rightful penalties for wrongdoing, doesn’t it?” Somehow, Rickard Stark’s tone didn’t change even slightly. “How fortunate for us both that Guest Right lets me sidestep all of these problems.”
The maester swallowed dryly as a bead of sweat dripped down his face. His tongue tied itself in knots as the drop slowly slid down his cheek and then further, until it reached his bloody wound. The salt stung. “You’d make such a great matter out of a stripling’s half-baked suspicion?” Walys croaked out. “The last time a man did that, you executed him.” Walys realized too late what he’d just said, but Rickard Stark didn’t use the opening at all.
“No. I’m doing it based on my own.
‘Over half of the poisons I know are made that way,’ you said.” Walys barely managed not to flinch at hearing his own, private words thrown back at him. “The irony is that even then I was ready to take it at face value. I never dwelt on the matter of poisons and maesters, as you would
have to know of such things in order to deserve your silver link. But now it turns out you could have alleviated my wife’s illness from the beginning but chose not to.
Chose not to.” Somehow, the fact that the man still hadn’t raised his voice in anger still terrified the maester. “It makes literally no difference that you have that secret stash. You then outright
tried to murder my son and then my wife-”
“Lord Stark-“
“Interrupt me again and I kill you.”
The maester’s words stuck in his throat.
“You tried to kill my wife, and then I had to spend two moonturns –
after finding out it’s my son and heir you really want – stewing in my own hatred and helplessness over knowing I couldn’t in good conscience jeopardise my wife’s recovery now that you were actually helping her.”
Seven curse them both, what next was the man going to twist into the worst possible shape?
“You’ve been very good at your job, Maester. Both of them.” Rickard said coldly. Somehow the man
still hadn’t exploded in anger. “If not for that bizarre argument with Brandon when you accused
him of trying to poison Lyarra, I never would have never suspected you. I’d never have diverted my attention from that other matter enough to look in on you at all. But that was less than two moonturns ago. Ten moonturns
after the misunderstanding was cleared up, that had been preventing me from finally settling the matter of your place in my household. Ten moonturns on top of ten years where I never suspected any duplicity from you but didn’t bring up the matter regardless. All because I thought I’d wrongly executed a man and didn’t want to do it again. Rodrik Cassel’s ghost has been guiding me all this time in a way, wouldn’t you say?”
Walys didn’t know
what he was supposed to say.
“Still, that leaves the past ten moonturns. Or nine, if you want to be technical. Do you know why I never broached it since?”
“…No.”
“You just won’t stop cheating!”
Walys Flowers flinched back in his chair as he finally learned what Rickard Stark sounded with voice raised in anger, though even then it didn’t last beyond the moment.
The Lord of the North settled back in his chair, tapping softly on Ice while he gazed at the maester silently for a time. “I’m a slow learner. It’s true. But I learn.” The words felt like a prophecy already ruined beyond recovery. “And what lessons I do learn I make a point to apply immediately.”
“…I was waiting for you to call me out on it,” Walys rasped. It wasn’t even a lie.
“And I was waiting for you to confess this last shred of fakery so I could finally reach out to you in friendship.”
Maester Walys Flowers stared at Lord Rickard of House Stark, dumbstruck.
“I don’t trust many people,” the nobleman said grimly.
But you were ready to trust me? “But I do strive to return the faith I am shown.”
And the lack of it rang loud in the wake of that. “I reserve my friendship for my equals, of which there are few, and my superiors, of which there are none. Yet. Think well what that means when I say I was ready to take you into my confidence. Regarding
everything short of those things only privy to those of my line. But then you went and tried to kill my wife. Even pretended ignorance at what was killing her beforehand. All because you think my son should die out of some zealous southron delusion. And I’m sure you have reams of blandishments and admonishments and arguments ready to explain and dismiss and convince me otherwise. To bring me back to your way of thinking like you did every other time in my life. To convince me that it was all for the greater good because my son is some sort of demon from your seven hells, is that right?”
To hear it spoken aloud made it sound mad. The quiet that followed was damning. To answer would have been even more damning, even if the nobleman was right on every count.
Rickard waited. “…No excuses then?” The man rapped and rapped and rapped on the symbol of broken hospitality. “No explanations? No arguments and deflections? No attempt to bring me around to your way of thinking like you always do? Successfully too.” The nobleman tilted his head, some strange mood passing over him briefly. “No attempt to sell out one or some or all of whatever handlers you may or may not have? As part of this conspiracy that may or may not exist outside of my son’s too rich imagination? Come now maester, give me
something to work with. Even if you fear I’ll react to whatever it is unduly, I have much more patience for obstinacy than I used to.”
“And what if I don’t have anything to give?” Walys asked bitterly. For someone who just said one shouldn’t play a game with a master, Rickard Stark certainly seemed poised to attempt just that. The maester hadn’t expected to be pre-emptively rebuffed so harshly. Hadn’t thought he’d ever have his guidance spurned so totally. He never imagined it would hurt this much. “Even if I miraculously knew what you wanted to hear, would you even be satisfied?”
“Certainly not. Words are wind, and the wind from the mouth of liars is especially foul. Better would have been to pretend ignorance and spy on you until I got all I could from your duplicity. Perhaps while also sending my wife and children away to visit someone or other. Alas, even those half-baked plans have been thoroughly ruined.”
“What then?” Walys asked, too soul-weary now to rise to the bait even if he believed it worth the effort. “Am I to be tortured?”
“Torture? As if that’s at all likely to earn me reliable information,” Rickard scoffed. “Assuming you wouldn’t feed me falsehoods as a way to get one last lick in. You must truly think poorly of me.”
“And why not?” Walys bit out, not even having to fake his scathing manner at this point. “You only just finished praising ancestral arrogance as a way to denigrate the best of the realm’s kings and queens in the pursuit of war.”
“And here we are. First you try reasoned argument. If that doesn’t work, you make an appeal to authority, either yours or that of someone else only you’ve ever heard of. Or an appeal to emotion I suppose, when it’s Lyarra you’re talking to. If that also fails, you engineer a situation where you destroy whatever confidence I might have gained after that small victory and then make me acknowledge you as the highest authority on the topic again. Gaslight me, as my son would say. And now, it seems, I’ve found the pit you’ll sink into when even that’s denied to you. You actually did it. You went and attacked me personally.”
Whatever uncertainty Maester Walys still felt was suddenly and thoroughly swept away by the utter
certainty that he was not leaving that room alive.
Somehow, that only loosened his tongue instead of locking it in the steel trap that was his mind. “You’d really do it, won’t you? You would have war.”
“No I would not, have you not listened to a word I said? I just spent the past Gods knows how long explaining the ins and outs of why the
Targaryens will. If the sane ones did all this to us, what do you think a mad one will do?”
“Oh what certainty upon those in distant thrones and castles! So certain are you, when you only met the current king the once.”
“A Targaryen is a Targaryen, a pattern is a pattern, and King Aerys was already mad when he summoned me into his presence during my visit to King’s Landing all those years ago.”
Maester Walys outright glared at the lord before him. “What do you even know of madness?
“Everything I saw on that one trip to King’s Landing of years ago. Everything that’s reached my ears since them. There is no ambition Aerys carries, other than maybe conquering the Stepstones, that wouldn’t be better termed a delusion. Building a whole new city because King's Landing smells. Building a war fleet to conquer Braavos because the Iron Bank was mean to him. Building an underwater canal to turn Dorne into a land of green plains, somehow. Gods, just my brief visit was enough to make him fantasise about building a second Wall hundreds of miles even further up North. Even
with winterstone we’d never be able to manage it, and we didn’t even have it at the time.”
“Is this is your game then? You would have a conspiracy and alliance between the Baratheons, Arryn and the Starks. Then you’d go to war for future ‘maybes’ confected out of your own assumptions of some great travesties that may or may not come in the future?”
“I’m playing nothing,” Rickard said coldly. “Up here we don’t play that game of thrones you southrons like so much, and for good reason. And there’s no maybe about it. Aerys was young, ambitious and optimistic. But that was ten years ago. Ten years of all his optimism, ambitions and dreams being blocked, circumvented and ruined by his Hand, the Small Council and every other force of self-interest and sanity at the capital. All that disappointment, circumvention and resistance to all his wishes will have festered into resentment and paranoia by now. Ten years to grow bitter. Ten years to
stew. Ten years for his oh so endearing crazy dreams to choke and rot into self-destructive wants and desires. I would be mad
not to take precautions. No Targaryen King has ever failed to paint the realm in blood when they finally destroyed themselves. I can only hope nothing like Summerhall happens again, because Gods save us if he truly becomes unhinged.”
“Oh what great foresight I see before me!” Walys scoffed, the certainty of his demise giving him strength in his last hour. “You mean to have the Arryns, Stark and Baratheon combine their power, and you’d waste it all on breaking things even more. Does it not occur to you what power such a block could attain in the capital? And what of the Tully's and Lannisters? Has it not occurred to you what opportunities lie on that front? If you but married one son to one of the Tully sisters, you could have young Jaime Lannister wed the other. You think the Great Lion would pass on such a chance to expand his power? Hells, with the right coaxing even
Dorne could be brought to the fold. There is literally
nothing such a force could not achieve. Trade agreements, tariff exemptions, tax reductions, new and greater honors, even the New Gift could simply be restored with but one stoke of Tywin Lannister’s quill. What war would need be had then?”
“And that’s where you and I differ, maester. You think an alliance of the Great Houses of Westeros could control House Targaryen, whereas I am not deluded enough to think
anything can control the mad.”
Walys Flowers glared at the lord before him, angry and affronted. Who was he to call him deluded when he spouted madness and treason and lust for war with every other word? “For someone who professes disgust for the games of southrons, you certainly seem ever so adept, my lord! How is it that I never saw the signs of this insanity when it has such a grip on you that you’d war against the realm entire for mere pride?”
“Oh please. Pride is the basis for all dignity. There is nothing
mere about it. And if pride is all you choose to jump on from all I’ve talked about this hour, we may as well end this right now.”
“Indeed!” the maester said sharply, throwing his head back and laughing almost madly himself. “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action, and over a dozen times is just being a cheeky little shit that needs to be put in his proper place, is that right? Never mind how much the North has prospered since the accession of House Targaryen. Never mind that the Iron Throne has to this day gotten more out of the
Dornish than it did the North. And Dorne wasn’t even part of the kingdoms for near two centuries!”
“That’s entirely owed to Torrhen’s negotiations and the steadfast obstinacy of my forebears and the North since then,” Rickard said flatly, as if he didn’t realize nor care that he was essentially incriminating himself and his forefathers. “Aegon the Unlikely aside, why do you think the Targaryens never miss an opportunity to spite us? It’s because Torrhen promised to abide to the
letter, and the letter of our vows is that to
Dragonstone we pledged our force of arms and hearth and
harvest. Nothing else. Bitter and defeated by his own children as he was, Torrhen was not so broken as to walk back on any of that. He did accede in the end to pay taxes like everyone else, but only because the rest of the kingdoms would have banded against us for such a major concession even without Aegon’s dragons breathing down their necks.”
Damn well they should, Walys thought spitefully.
“But that doesn’t mean we didn’t use that leverage to force a compromise on everything else. Why do you think the Iron Throne never openly moved against us every time we ignored the Blackfyres? Our oaths are to Dragonstone, not the Iron Throne. So long as the Targaryens hold it, we are sworn to them, but the Blackfyres are all
legitimate members of House Targaryen with an equal claim to the island. That aside, why do you think tarrifs on Essossi food imports and other trade with them are so high that the Manderlys can’t afford a war fleet? I can assure you that ‘promoting internal production and trade’ isn’t even half of it, no matter how happy it makes the Reach. The Velaryons too, since it’s stymied House Baratheon’s ability to build a fleet of their own. Shipbreaker Bay is one thing, but Tarth could easily handle it, and in fact did so often in the past. Dragonstone is the only territory with a royal exemption from those particular tarrifs and taxes, being the royal homeland and all. And all of that pales, of course, next to that little bit where Jaehaerys and his bitch queen literally crippled out food source in perpetuity.”
Maester Walys stared at Lord Rickard of House Stark, struck almost speechless by the sheer shamelessness on display. Almost. Barely. “You would wage war because you think you should only pay taxes on food. The North. On
food.”
“Oh come now, I hope you don’t expect me to buy into this fake outrage. Especially when the point is precisely the opposite of what you’re making light of. Food is the least of what the North has to offer, but also the one thing that the North can’t spare. Or did you think it mere whim that we’ve started importing food from the South when we didn’t need to before?”
“Unbelievable,” Walys said, unwilling to engage in that pointless line of discussion. Incapable and unwilling to obfuscate the disbelief and aversion he suddenly felt towards the man before him. “You actually admit it. It really is all for your damned pride after all!”
“Ah yes,” Rickard Stark said just as disdainfully. “How ill done of us to
not lightly become the sycophantic dogs of a lunatic blessed with a weapon the size of his ego but not a tenth of the ability or claim that should have followed. But the answer is still no.”
Maester Walys stared at the madman before him, almost incapable of forcing down his reaction to that blatant provocation. Wondered what made it so that man could sit there and look so grim and undaunted while he spewed so much vitriol. Wondered if he was going mad himself. Or if it really was more than coincidence that he couldn’t think back to any sign of all this insanity. Especially none that dated to before the man began to wear those metal rings in his beard. “This is why you killed the Boltons, isn’t it?” Walys realized suddenly.
“Not at all. That really was just our ancestral feud paying off. Not that I’m not pleased to have that particular canker on the North’s nose ripped out.”
“It won’t end so cleanly, I hope you realize.”
“It wouldn’t shock me to learn the Boltons sent someone to the Second Sons or wherever else at some point,” the man dismissed with a shrug. “But they’ll find out long after I’ve dealt with the matter. And their claim would be flimsy even if I didn’t have just cause to attain their whole line now that I know what oathbreakers they are. Flaying under our noses for all this time, honestly. But what can you expect from betrayers who tried to sell us out to the Andal invaders and wore our skin as cloaks on and off over millennia before then?”
The maester wondered if it would even help poking at
that atrociously outdated grievance at this point. Walys decided there wasn’t any point to even attempt discretion in changing the topic. The maester forced his mind away from that pathway. He still had one more point to make. One of many, even if he wasn’t so deluded to think he’d be allowed to voice all of them. “You can’t win that war. You don’t have the men.”
“Yes we do.”
“No. Not for an offensive war.”
“Not yet. Not without the alliances, which you’ve been the strongest advocate for, if you’ll recall.”
“You don’t have any ships. Hells, you haven’t had any naval power worth mentioning for thousands of years. How will you even move your troops anywhere? How does that dovetail with all these secret plans? Think you to bribe Dirftmark perhaps? Or go begging for scraps from those Ironborn nuisances? Ha! Or perhaps you mean to squeeze through the Neck and camp in front of the Twins until the Freys take pity on you and finally demand their toll?”
Rickard Stark pinched his nose and groaned. Groaned! “Good Gods!” The noble looked at him and spoke slowly then. As if he were Archmaester Walgrave in one of those too frequent cases when Walys said something so preposterous that he spent the rest of the days feeling like a dunce. “Maester, do tell me. Please. After Bran the Burner destroyed his father’s ships and shipyards, what’s the next thing that happened?”
Walys Flowers stared at the man, uncomprehending. Then he did comprehend and experienced the abrupt impulse to jump out the window from shame. “The Worthless War...”
“The Worthless War. The War Across the Water.
A thousand years of maritime warfare. How the hell does everyone keep thinking we never rebuilt our naval power? I guess it’s true what my father said, some things are just so stupid that only intellectuals can believe them.”
The insult did not wash over him like others had in the past between them, for the simple fact that it was completely accurate and deserved this time. Especially with how much time had passed between now and the time of the Shipwright...
Not that Walys was ready to believe the man on anything now, let alone something so grand. That the North rebuilt its fleet at some point didn’t mean it hadn’t also been lost again, somehow. Wasn’t it the North who conceded the Worthless War in the end? There had to be a reason for it. There was no way to hide even a middling fleet without it scuttling or rotting away either. If the North had naval assets worth more than the hot air being spewed in his face right now, someone would have long since found out.
But that line of talk was even more doomed than the last one. “No…” Walys eventually said instead, trying to sound more certain than he felt. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe any of it. Nor do I think your motives are as pure as you claim. You’re just out to finish what Torrhen started. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it?”
“Actually, I’ve been entirely honest. If I don’t want something known, I just stay quiet. I thought you knew that by now.”
He’d thought he did, but the man had shared all that with a supposed enemy far too freely. More importantly, this wasn’t the first time Walys’s entire system of beliefs had come crashing down around him over the course of just one conversation.
“Incidentally, if there
were some ancestor or other whose contributions to the North I’d want to emulate, it wouldn’t be Torrhen but Cregan.”
Walys couldn’t help but look at the man in complete disbelief. “Cregan Stark was a short-sighted opportunist. His only contribution to history was trying to smash the hardest-won and most fragile peace in the history of Westeros, because he was angry at always being late to everything.”
“Quite so,” Rickard Stark agreed, shocking him. “Or at least that’s one way to look at him. He didn’t seem too concerned with what history would say about him, seeing as he didn’t leave much written in his own hand despite living so long. But if he really was just that, he’s also the king of unintended consequences. Cregan could easily have seceded during the Dance or after. But I assume Jacaerys got the benefit of the doubt for being Velaryon instead of Targaryen, and bringing the blood of dragonlords into the Stark line was certainly a prize worth fighting for. I doubt it surprised Cregan when the Targaryens reneged on the Pact of Ice and Fire, but he
did get to execute enough southron high lords that the Andal kingdoms were embroiled in inheritance strife. So much that they were unable to threaten the North or properly rise in favour of a Targaryen suppression force for an entire generation. We were spared all the audits from the royal taxman for a while there too, thank the Gods. That always turns into an embarrassment.”
“Of course it does,” Walys said darkly. “What else could happen when the North can find fault even in the most fundamental of sworn duty?”
“You misunderstand: it turns into an embarrassment for them, not us. Whenever the office of the Master of Coin questions how little coin we send, we invite them to come take their share from the source. On the rare occasions where they take us up on it, our contribution numbers are confirmed every time. Because we have them accompanied by loyal men and the most cutthroat of our own taxmen we can find. It goes a long way to keep the local taxman on the little man’s side when he’s paid to
prevent the king’s taxman from demanding too much. The loyalty of our smallfolk grows considerably in the doing, I’ll tell you that much. Smallfolk loving the taxman, honestly. Only House Targaryen could ever be mad enough to make that come to pass.”
That… That… Maester Walys had no idea what to say to that.
Lord Rickard looked thoughtfully out the window. The eerily quiet window from whose sill the lone remnant of the raven conspiracy had been watching Walys all that time. “It baffles me to this day that Cregan didn’t secure Northern independence during his brief time as Hand.”
Perhaps Jacaerys had been shrewd enough to insist on a wording that forbid him that loophole, Walys thought but didn’t say. He was certain that it would not go down well.
“Perhaps Jacaerys had been shrewd enough to insist on a wording that forbid him that loophole,” Walys jerked in his chair, shocked. Had he misjudged him so utterly? Could they both be thinking so much alike? Or could the man read minds now also? “But Cregan also left behind the bulk of his whole army. Over ten thousand young, faithful and adventurous lads that put down roots and married and multiplied until they became our biggest and most prolific source of information. For so long they continued to pine after and keep in touch with their northern families, which they occasionally renewed blood ties with via marriage. Letters continue to travel by coach and rider between North and South to this day, even if not as many as generations ago. They send supplies to their kin too, sometimes. Incidentally, their many, strong, well-fed and restless descendants should now be anxiously seeking prospects. Even if half of them converted to the Seven, the other half should be jaded enough with pushy septons to jump at any promise of honest work and opportunity I may or may not send word of in the near future.”
Walys Flowers stared at Rickard Stark, numb with surprise and annoyance and incredulity. He was ready to go on an entire diatribe about rose-tinted glasses and baseless assumptions and the shame in using such cheap ways of romanticizing one’s ancestors. But the impulse was smothered by the surprise at Rickard Stark not pouncing harder on the issue of the Pact of Ice and Fire. After the character assassination he’d committed against Good Queen Alysanne, he’d have expected the man to condemn the Targaryen line here as well. From his perspective, House Stark saved the Targaryens in their darkest hour and were never rewarded for that. It could easily be spun into a major insult, promising a Targaryen princess to Cregan's heir in the Dance and never following up on it, even when Cregan saved house Targaryen after Aegon II's death. That was not even counting the surplus of princesses that House Targaryen had of age with Cregan’s son. Baela and Rhaena came to mind, Daemon's daughters both of them. And then Aegon III's daughters, Daena, Rhaena and Elaena. The first two could have married his heir Rickon, and the latter three could have married Jonnel, when his brother died in service of Daeron in Dorne.
Never mind that it wasn’t Targaryen but a Velaryon pledge that broke and failed!
“Even a hundred years later the Old Man of the North still vexes us, but with that track record I can’t really hold it against him too much,” the other man mused, seemingly oblivious to his maester’s open scorn as he traced the ripples in the dragonsteel with a fingertip. Dragonsteel for the old wolf’s most prized heirloom. Oh the irony! “I doubt I’ll ever know if Cregan was a strategic mastermind or just an ambitious opportunist with the most absurd luck in the world. But maybe luck isn’t the right word for it. Things
did just tumble forward on the same tracks and currents we’ve travelled all the millennia before. As far as unintended consequences go, they’re pretty up there, wouldn’t you say maester?”
“… My Lord…“ But Walys trailed off. Even that little courtesy made him taste ash.
“I never believed it before no matter how my father tried to explain it,” Rickard Stark suddenly broke the stalemate, conveying a strange sort of satisfaction without actually showing it, somehow. “But this really does seem to be what happens when you’re not entirely shit at keeping your moral code – the unintended consequences of your actions can actually be good ones. I hope I’ll do a better job teaching that lesson to my children than I did learning it.”
The silence fell and weighed over them and stretched over seconds and minutes and it was not kind or easy at all.
“I’ll have to teach Brandon a lot of things he still doesn’t know, it seems,” Lord Stark finally resumed watching Walys again. “My son sat on this issue
far too long. I could have settled it one way or another ten moons ago. It’s quite telling he didn’t question why guest right even applies here as well. It occurs to me that he might not even know what a maester’s position and vows actually are. Not that it will be relevant for much longer. I believe I now know how to properly handle the appointment of maesters. And what guidance to provide on the matter to my bannermen of course.” Rickard Stark treated his maester to a gaze that he didn’t know how else to describe besides painstaking. “Mayhap I should see to it that the North stops shirking from magic as well. We clearly lack all other means to navigate this darkness you’ve been pushing me down at every turn.”
Maester Walys Flowers didn’t understand. Then he did and promptly gaped at Rickard Stark in open-mouthed horror.
“Congratulations maester, you’ve done what you always meant to do,” said the Head of House Stark and Warden of the North. “You’ve changed the North more than any other Andal before you. Tell me, is this not a worthy achievement?”
Walys did not reply. He was too stunned.
“Get out of my sight.”
“… What?”
“Leave.”
“Y-you…” His tongue felt heavy in his mouth and his throat scratched against itself as he stumbled over his own words. “You’re not going to kill me?”
“Oh Walys,” Rickard Stark said sadly. “I don’t need to do anything more. Do I?”
Those last two words said so softly haunted his steps as he left the room in a daze. All that certainty and uncertainty and certainty again, all of them had been brushed aside as if they didn’t matter. As if none of it matter. As if he didn’t matter. He felt… he didn’t know how he felt. His feet carried him forward but all sense and reason seemed like they lagged behind him no matter how many hallways and bridges and stairs and steps he walked and paced. Even when his robes flapped with every draft and his chain clinked every time he made a turn and didn’t, the world around just didn’t seem real.
The stone-faced guards posted outside the Library Tower were the first hint that something was wrong. Their fellows guarding the stairs to the living quarters were the second hint about what else he hadn’t known was wrong, when he made to save time on the walk to his tower and they denied him access for the first time ever. When he tried to stop a passing servant, the girl just looked down and hurried on without giving response. When he called after her, then tried to physically stop the next one he crossed paths with, he stumbled to a halt at the loud
prruk-prruk-prruk of a raven’s call. Spinning around with his heart in his throat, he found Alban staring at him from an old beam up above.
The maester all but fled from the sight as fast as his walk could take him, in a vain effort to outrun the anger and grief of that theft and complete betrayal. But even as he pounded down the length of the suspended bridge between the Great Keep and the Maester’s Tower, he stopped at the mid-point window to look outside. He saw twice the number of on-duty guards everywhere he looked. Then he finally entered his tower proper, only to be faced with the terrible discovery that it wasn’t his tower anymore. There were fresh grooves in the flooring everywhere he looked as if something or somethings had been dragged about. The doors to all quarters but his own were locked. The stairwells to the rookery and the observatory were blocked by silent sentries that stared at him accusingly. And his rooms…
They were all but empty. The place had been stripped clean. Ransacked top to bottom of everything of worth. The bookcases were empty, the desk was bare inside and out, scraps of paper littered the floor now bare of every last rug and carpet. His sleeping area had been stripped clean of blankets, feathers and even the straw. Not even his personal effects were to be found anywhere, few and meagre as those mementos were. A chip of his acolyte dorm wall, his copy of
A Caution for Young Girls by Coryanne Wylde, even his father’s old archmaester rod. Gone. All gone. The only thing that stood out was a small vial sat in the middle of the desk. Sweetsleep. It lay there like the most innocent thing, a clean and clear monument to all his sins. Glinted tauntingly in the pale light of the winter afternoon reflected off the snow.
Rickard Stark had never been playing any games with him. It was a lot simpler. He was stalling until the guards could ransack his chambers and all his hiding places.
Walys didn’t know how long he stared at the thing. He knew even less how he managed to stumble away from the thing, or how he wound up staring out the window for even longer afterwards. The world was a painting of still whiteness and moving men, twigs, branches and ravens playing on the sharp, sloped roof of the great hall in front of him. The dark birds were using the snow-covered roof as a slide. Others were rolling down snowy mounds down in the yard and stables, playing keep-away with each other and the dogs. Half the rookery seemed spread all over Winterfell, having the grandest time as if to spite him whose life had taken a turn for everything but. There were even a bunch of the birds making toys out of sticks and stones and pinecones. They played with them like happy children, hopping and bouncing and cawing all over the canopy of the firewood supply next to the Great Hall. He wondered how long it would take before one of them broke off from the mob through whatever sorcery. Come over and taunt or mock him and complete the picture.
He saw little Ned and Lyanna and Benjen throwing snowballs too, after a while. He wondered if they knew anything. He wondered if anyone would try to save them and the North after he was gone.
The shadows were much longer when he finally turned away from the window. He walked back to the desk on stiff legs. He stood there for a while, staring at the bottle that could only have come from the stash he kept in the rookery which was beyond his reach now.
Then he took and threw it at the wall with a scream of anguish and it shattered.
“The one who passes the sentence must swing the sword, is that it?” Walys asked harshly, looking up at his white raven that wasn’t his any longer now. “You don’t have to swing the sword if you’re not the one passing the sentence, is that it?” What a way for Rickard Stark to tell him what he thought should have been his answer, all those years ago when
he counselled for murder.
He didn’t even have any way to gainsay the logic, Walys thought bitterly.
He left the tower with grim purpose. If Rickard Stark wanted so badly to see him shunned and disdained and humiliated in his great halls of power, far be it from him to gainsay his decision. The kitchens would probably be closed to him, as would the armory and tool sheds and everyone’s goodwill. None of it would matter. There were always at least three knives misplaced in obvious places, and while he could have used a proper mortar and pestle cup, a wooden mug and broken broom handle and one of the many dog bowls would suffice. The only thing that made him think twice was the shovel, but that solved itself when an errand boy saw him and dropped the one he was carrying in his rush not to be seen anywhere near him. One would have thought Walys was some leper, except the boy proved every bit as foolhardy as every other peasant in the world by stopping to watch him from around the nearest corner.
Were he a lesser man, Walys might have considered taking him hostage just to satisfy what little he could of his bubbling spite.
Instead, he beat down any attempts by his mind to conjure similarities with the not-child this was all about, picked up the shovel and made for the Godswood. He was stopped by guards there too, of course. But they didn’t leave their posts to escort him off. And when one of the pair was about to break their silent staredown to go looking for a superior, the white raven flew and cawed above them, making them look up and spot the Lord himself. He was stood on the balcony of the Great Keep itself, looking down on them from his great place on high. After a while, he nodded shortly to the guards to let him go about his business. Walys didn’t bother feeling vindicated over having his expectations met.
“Your plans will fail you know,” Walys said once the shade of the trees engulfed him, not needing to look up in the boughs to know his raven was there watching. Listening to everything he said. “You should have started teaching all your children these things as soon as they became old enough to be able to keep a secret. Surely Brandon and Ned have reached that point? And is there a backup plan so that your secret designs aren’t lost in case you and your heir are killed? There must always be someone to clean up the mess, no? That is what lordship is. That is what
kingship is.”
He made his way through the trees rightward instead of forward where the Heart tree stood. Didn’t stop until he came upon the three hot pools that fed Winterfell’s pipe system. As always, even in winter, the place was bountiful in all the shrubs and moss and mushrooms not of the edible kind. Or at least, not edible as most people understood them.
“When Arryn and Baratheon find out what you’re using them for, how will they respond? For all the value you place in being underestimated, you don’t prove very good at conveying when you want that to cease. When Lord Ellard Stark supported the claim of Laenor Velaryon over Viserys Targaryen during the Great Council of 101 AC, was it because you actually hoped he would win? Or was it a warning? How does the Iron Throne remember it these days, I wonder?”
He gathered what he needed, prepared them in the right ways, mixed them in the right order and mashed everything together in fits and starts with an ounce of water until the paste was soft and even. Then he set the bowl down and went off to look for a place to dig that wasn’t frozen solid.
“Even if Arryn and Baratheon or whoever else you pull into your scheme doesn’t hold your secret agenda against you, why would they help? Why should they throw their lot in with you when you frame your hate of the Iron Throne in the same hate you feel for the entirety of the Andal kingdoms? The Iron Throne is supposed to protect and preserve the good of
all the realm. Even if they agree you seem exempt, why should they care? You’ve given them no reason not to view the North as an empty land with no prospects and you as heathen barbarians. Blame it on septons if you wish, it’s not all because our Gods are different.”
The last ingredient was further near the forest’s midpoint, well away from the hot springs proper, but persistence paid off where memory didn’t. The sun disappeared from the sky and his limbs protested by the time he was done digging, but angry perseverance was on his side and soon enough even the weirwood roots were in his hands.
He ignored the voice of Archmaester Norren who’d so often japed about this or that Andal revisionist that most recently took his turn shitting all over the First Men in their history books. Walys had thought it an ill vice once, a means for malcontents to force through the idea that Andal supremacy was nothing short of inevitable. Now that he’d seen the depth of misplaced and undeserved Northern pride for himself, he found himself far less outraged on the native’s behalf.
“I wonder, is it truly obligation that drives you, or is it your own wounded pride? When you visited the capital, how much did they mock you I wonder? Did the Iron Throne’s Small Council jape behind your back? Did they jape to your face even, when you were down there? For relying on the Riverlands and Reach for food in winter, mayhap? How hard was it to hold your tongue about Jaehaerys and his Good Queen wife that heaped the New Gift insult on you all? Truly, such grand benefits you receive from being part of the Seven Kingdoms! At least before the conquest there was always a goodly stream of conscripts for the Wall thanks to all the warring down there, wasn’t that what you said?”
Why should he shy away from saying his piece, now when he could do so without interruption or rebuke?
He was shivering by the time he made it back to the hot springs, his grey robe not enough to keep him warm despite the clothing underneath. He thought of taking a dip in the pools themselves for a while, then his mind conjured an image of the raven plunging beak-first through his eye socket and him floating off dead in the middle of the pool.
“You only invite woe if you think Cregan’s leftover northmen can be turned to your benefit now,” Walys told his foul watcher once he decided not to push his luck. “You would spread word of lofty Northern opportunities to pull all those legions of increasingly disenfranchised peasants in numbers greater than what Cregan left behind a dozen times over. Oh, what a great feat by the Old Man of the North six decades dead! Whatever news the Winds of Winter carry from far off places, they are not the only winds, or even foremost among them. The northmen left behind will have married and established families and bloodlines in the south. Put down roots, just as you said. You think there is no strife of faith in every household? You think inviting them North won’t invite all those tensions you disdain as well? You think the Seven won’t come along with them? For all the contempt you hold for southron snobbery and the Faith of the Seven, that’s exactly who you mean to bring in. Westeros is at the edge of a precipice. The scales are frail, ripe for the right word to tilt and shatter them every which way no matter the wish of one person. Bring them up and it’s the southron kingdoms that the rumor mill will serve. You might even spark an uprising of the Faith. The Faith Militant, didn’t you yourself say they lie in wait? To say nothing of the tensions that could erupt among the nobles whose smallfolk you’ll be poaching. Rile them and they won’t stop until you all drown in their spite.”
“Spite! Spite! Spite!” Alban cawed from the snowy branches behind him.
“Is that your way of telling me
I’m drowning in spite?”
He was talking to animals now, Walys thought as he used his purloined knife to scrape the insides of the root bark into the mug full of hot water. Then again, he’d been doing that for years now. Oh Alban. He couldn’t bear to think about his fate. He couldn’t bear to think of suffering the same. He would
not suffer the same, even if it killed him. He’d take his own life before that happened.
But he’ll do it on his own terms.
Finally, the paste was ready. It wasn’t the distilled potion he made before, the one that gave him his most precious and doomed spark of insight, but quantity would just have to substitute for quality in this case.
Picking it up, he walked to stand between the three pools to soak in the warmth one last time.
Then he turned around and made his way to the Heart Tree at the Godswood’s core. He could already feel the cold seep into his bones. He knew it would take him long before the paste’s effects wore off. Or would have, if he hadn’t deliberately made ten times as much as it was safe to take. He stood there, fantasising of chopping the thing down, burning it to ciders and then dancing over the ashes and remains.
Instead, he walked to stand in front of it, knelt down and began to eat the mixture one handful at a time.
“Whatever else may be, the southron wife you buy an alliance through will do the one thing the Andals never managed, you realise,” Walys said between bites, because of spite he had plenty to spare of his own even now. “You’re a fool if you think a Lord of a Great House won’t demand you let his precious spawn bring the Faith here with her.”
Wouldn’t that be ironic? Thousands of years of defiance undone for the price of a maidenhead, assuming the woman will even have it by the time she’s wed.
Too bad he wouldn’t be alive to see it. He'd have to settle for spitting the tree demons in the eye.
Walys’ mind stalled. The Godswood teetered suddenly as if weighed down by the weight of the world. The blood-leafed tree’s two eyes seemed to mist over with white fog. The moon rose high into the sky. Its scattered beams pierced the flame-red heavens and cast forth as shadows disappeared from amidst the branches. The fading footprints of a warrior slain lingered in the snow reflected in the pool of black water. Then, suddenly, that hated sight of a black abyss surrounded by a thousand and one eyes of fire noticed him from where it wallowed in Winterfell’s most auspicious bowels. Then it shimmered into the shape of a boy wearing his sight as part of a cloak made of crow feathers. They blinked at him.
Above all else, the sight brought one last question to his mind.
If she had time to learn to read before it was all done, how many years
did her wetnurse and mother breastfeed the Good Queen Alysanne?
“-. .-“
To the Seneschal of the Citadel,
I’d hoped that the last one was a fluke, what with how he managed to get himself killed along with the entirety of my family and half of Winterfell’s staff because he couldn’t handle one epidemic. But now I find this new maester you sent me dead of exposure after spending the whole night doped up on some poison or drug in the snow.
Since your leadership is clearly as incompetent as the poor excuses for learned men you’ve been sending me, I'm coming down there to choose my help myself.
Rickard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.
“-. .-“
To Leyton Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, Lord of Oldtown, Voice of Oldtown, Defender of the Citadel, Defender of Oldtown, Lord of the Port and Beacon of the South,
Greetings from the North.
If you are reading this letter, then my special raven got this message to you without ever passing through the hands of any maester of the Citadel.
When my father and mother and the rest of my family and half of Winterfell died when I was six and ten, I had no reason to suspect my maester of any wrongdoing because he’d also died to the sickness. But now I find out my new maester has been conspiring with others at the Citadel in pursuit of aims and objectives unknown. Circumstances prevented me from uncovering the what, who or why. But they did not
prevent me from learning that, whatever their goals may be, they hinged among other things on murdering my wife and firstborn
. The plot against my heir has been prevented, but my wife’s life now hangs in the balance. Worse, I never got the chance to squeeze my maester for information. The treacherous fiend was found dead by his own hand the very next day after I got word from the Dreadfort’s
maester that House Bolton has gone extinct under obscenely suspicious circumstances.
Attached is a copy of the letter I sent to the Citadel, as well as a summary of the evidence House Stark is currently in possession of, to be gone over in more detail in a moon or so during my visit of your fine city.
I’ve given similar warning to all the other Great Houses I could reach without risking their maesters learning of this first. However, as a gesture of courtesy, as well as my confidence that House Hightower could surely not
be involved in any plots so foul, I leave it to you to decide how to handle this matter relative to the Iron Throne. As, indeed, I urged our peers to do as well.
Good luck in your hunt, for all our sakes,
Rickard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.
