“-. 274 AC .-“
“Lord Rickard of House Stark cut a dashing figure. He was tall of stature, solemn of countenance, mindful in every action, and bedecked in the singularly most unique apparel. His head was bare. His shoulder-length dark hair fluttered in the winter winds, tamed only by two plaits that sprung from his temples and merged together at the back into one braid. His strong hands bore no glove or gauntlet, but the rest of him was adorned in a mighty suit of plate, castle-forged steel over mail protecting him from chin to heel. The cuirass shone. The plackart gleamed. The faulds flowed into a split kilt of studded leather all the way down to the knees. And over it all, overlayed only by the man’s brassarts and mighty pauldrons, was a great coat of sable leather lined with wool and suede. Its sleeves were long, the lower flaps fluttered around the angles of his greaves, its seams were stitched in double chains, and all along the front were buttons made of polished silver. They hung free and undone despite the freezing cold. Yet even in the dusk-like dimness of the winter dawn they twinkled like-“
“Like your whole face will twinkle if you don’t.
Stop. Narrating!”
“What!?” Boar turned on his heel with a gasp, outraged. “Is this a heathen I see before me? For shame, Whoresbane! I am
describing, not narrating! Do thine virgin ears fail you even now? Do thine eyes account for nothing? Look at the man! Look at his face, his clothes, hells, look at his hands!”
“You’ll get a close look at
my hands if you don’t stop ogling my lord right now.”
“My word! The nerve! To think you’d be so disrespectful as to imply your noble liege needs
you to protect his virtue! The nerve! The scandal! When I mean but to convey upon you the deepest insight into your fatherland!”
“Oh this better be good.”
“His nails, you boor! They’re
perfect. No knife or shear can yield such firm softness. Either he’s got someone around to file them down for hours, or someone’s had the leisure and coin to spend on inventing some all-knew, unknown contraption to cut them down to size. Either means the North has changed enough to afford diverting time and resources, during a realm-shaking event, in
winter, purely towards the pursuit of convenience. The North is turning
vain.”
“Vain, vain, vain!” Cried a white raven from the eaves above them, scaring ten years off Luwin’s life.
He wasn’t the only one. “Well that wasn’t terrifying at all-oh my!”
Surprised to hear Boar’s breath, of all people, being taken away, Luwin looked away from his examination of the sledhouses to see Lord Stark having finally turned his head in their direction.
Boar gave a long, low whistle under his breath that sounded nothing else but admiring. “You know what, Whoresbane, I take it all back. With a face like that I understand
perfectly why savages like you would flock to protect the man. There’s natural order and then there’s
that. Maybe I should grow a beard of my own if that’s what I can look forward too. Mmm-Mmm!”
Hother gaped at the young man, completely lost for words.
Luwin carefully did not broadcast his own feelings lest anyone realise he agreed with Boar here. There was gold and silver in that there beard or he’s a Dornish Prince. He was grateful Ryben was still inside the inn changing to travel wear. He didn’t want to risk anyone
else remarking on Hother’s ruddy cheeks somehow going even deeper scarlet than they were already. That all wasn’t just anger, even he could tell that much.
Which was just as well, because Hother didn’t get the chance to act on it.
Rickard Stark had finally approached them.
“Six and ten arrivals,” said the Warden of the North. Luwin pretended not to notice Boar’s overdramatic swoon. “That’s two more than I reckoned. Who intrudes on matters of the North?”
“That would be me, your lordship!” Boar said grandly, stepping out of their huddle and giving the most perfect, most grandiose bow Luwin had ever seen. “Boeryn Sand, at your service. Healer, alchemist, interpreter and orator extraordinaire! Forgive my boldness, my lord, but on hearing that all of my cellmates were being spirited away, I simply had to assess their patron for myself! Of course, I didn’t expect I’d find you – your cause! I didn’t expect I’d find
your cause so compelling, but fate makes fools of us all these days. I offer you my services for a year and a day, if you’ll have me.”
“Do you now?” Lord Stark asked, giving nothing away as he beheld the Dornishman. The
young Dornishman, Luwin couldn’t help but note when compared to the nobleman. Boar was barely older than Luwin himself, and he’d only just turned five and te- “Hother, how do you spell his name?”
“B-o-e-r-y-n, my lord.”
“Hmm.” Lord Stark… did
not sound appeased. “Let me see if I understand correctly. We stand here in the aftermath of the worst purge in the Citadel’s recorded history. Said purge occurred from fear of what
I might do worse when I got here. My journey took place because my supposedly loyal maester attempted to murder my wife and heir as part of some conspiracy. He did this using a skill in poisons he’d kept hidden. And now you come here. One among many who saw their lives ended or ruined over the past few days for being involved with all that, however remotely. You intrude on my business unasked and unlooked for. You play an exaggerated caricature of yourself in the same breath as you all but gloat over possessing the same set of skills as my wife and son’s would-be murderer. And in doing all of that, you waste the precious time I could be using to instead make haste back home where my wife is dying as we speak. Considering all this and the fact that
anagrams are not subtle, should we skip the theatrics all the way to the part where I take you hostage?” At a sign from the man, the half of the two hundred Stark guards loitering about came to attention, drew their swords and surrounded them. “Or would you like to recant on any of the claims you just made?”
Luwin heard and witnessed everything as if in a fog. Dimly, he noticed that Hother had all but leapt away from their cellmate and drawn a short sword from… somewhere. He didn’t look like he’d expected the upset, though, any more than Luwin had. Or anyone else. The three youngest acolytes were literally clinging to Mullin in sheer fright.
Boar carefully looked around at the men and weapons surrounding them, ten of whom were within leaping distance. “I can see how my actions would invite suspicion, especially given the tumultuous circumstances of your presence here, my lord. Perhaps a beneficial compromise that would make my day
and assuage all of your misgivings is not as simple to strike as I thought.”
“Not even close,” Rickard Stark said flatly.
“My lord,” Umber said roughly. “Is it a faceless man, you think?”
“No,” the lord replied. “Just a boy with more nerve than sense.”
“By the Rhoyne, my lord!” Boar balked, aghast. “You needn’t subject me to your cutting wit so harshly. I know when to back down.”
“No you do not, or you’d have dropped the mummery well before this. Someday you will overstretch and it will kill you. It won’t be a very easy death either, if you antagonise whoever it is half as much as you did a Lord Warden of the Realm. You overstep and overreach. Much like my son in that way, except he has the excuse of being but one and ten name days.”
Boar almost seemed to react to that, but instead gave a put upon sigh. “Never fear, my lord, I know when I’m not welcome.”
Luwin stared at Boar incredulously. How could he still make light of… whatever this was?
Rickard Stark was even less impressed. “I don’t believe you. Nor would I trust your ability to live up to your claim if I did. That being said, while I
can afford calling both your competence and honour into question somewhat more than you can mine, that would just be an even bigger waste of my time. Which is why I’ll be writing the relevant parties about this as soon as I depart.”
Boar’s composure finally cracked. Not that Luwin could blame him. He’d do more than crack if someone told him he’d be contacting his parents over… whatever this was.
Wait, Boar was a bastard. Did he even know his own parents? Did he have both parents?
The matter of anagrams and spelling and hostage-taking finally stumbled into their proper pattern and Luwin could but stare at his acquaintance of two years, jaw dropped.
“… Alright then,” said the Dornishman. “I’ll get out of your admittedly exquisite hair, by your leave my lord?”
“Go.”
Oberyn Martell bowed shortly and turned to address one last time his four ‘friends.’ “Alas, dear fellows, this is it for us. I enjoyed our time together! Do write to me sometime, hmm? And close that mouth, Luwin. It’s unseemly.”
The Prince of Dorne then promptly sauntered off.
Luwin stared after him, barely noticing the white raven following him from the rooftops while struggling to make sense of what had just unfolded. Was
this why the Princess of Dorne just ‘happened’ to come across Boar earlier that year? Just ‘happened’ to hire him along for their journey to and back from that trip to the Westerlands? The triumphant satisfaction that usually accompanied the completion of a puzzle didn’t emerge this time. Luwin had not expected to be deceived from that quarter. He hadn’t though betrayal would feel like this. Hadn’t expected to be made to feel like such a fool. A bigger fool than any maester or archmaester had managed to make him feel like. Ever.
He exchanged disturbed looks with the rest of his friends. If they really were that. Luwin suddenly felt resentment bubble inside him as well. With this one act, ‘Boar’ had made him question every last one of his other friendships as well.
Fucking Dornish.
He couldn’t go back home to the North fast enough.
“Right then,” Rickard Stark said once ‘Boar’ finally passed beyond the island inn’s grounds and out of sight. “Whoever else is here without vouchsafing or invitation, speak now.”
It was at that point that Luwin realized no one had actually told him precisely where he fell in all thi-
“That would be my companion here,” Marwyn interjected, stepping up from the lean-to next to the kennels. The squat man had been playing with the sleigh dogs. Two of the wolf-like hounds jumped playfully around him even now. He pat them fondly on the head as he gestured to his tall, slightly stooped companion. “This is Qyburn.”
“Which tells me precisely nothing,” Lord Stark said.
“Figured you could do with the prestige of a ‘real’ maester to start you off, however long that lasts.” When that didn’t appease the taller man, the Archmaester grunted. “He’s got one silver link more than I do.”
What? No... That's impossible!
Lord Stark suddenly focused his entire attention on the willowy man.
The man – Qyburn – faltered at the sudden attention, but reached up to push back the hood of his grey robe, revealing a man older than everyone else present. His clothes were somewhat frayed and sewn unevenly, but that stopped mattering the moment the complete maester’s chain around his neck was revealed. Luwin wished he was close enough to count the silver links in it. The man didn’t seem to know what to actually say though. Instead, he reached into his worn satchel and pulled out a familiar stack of papers. “I’ve identified almost all of the substances here.” He dithered awkwardly, then shuffled forward to hold them out to the lord. “… Most on the list probably won’t be useful for what you need them, but I can see potential uses for some of the matches.”
Lord Stark took the papers and skimmed them briefly before returning his attention to the man.
“There are some substances that aren’t peddled anywhere in Oldtown, at least not openly. There are composites or by-products of other processes as well. I know the process for creating most of them but it
should be possible to go without them, if my guess about your intended process is correct.”
“And that is?”
“Bread mold medicine.”
That jarred Lord Stark out of his self-possession quite thoroughly.
For good reason too, Luwin thought. Mold tea? That only ever made things worse. It was known! Whatever few cases were documented where it helped at all involved entire slurries of other compounds that happened to somehow interact with each other and-
Luwin’s thoughts staggered to a halt. Compounds. Interaction.
Catalysts.
Infections.
A spell of clarity descended on Luwin’s mind. No one there had fewer than two links of silver in their chain, complete or not. Was this why? Was Lady Stark suffering from an infection or plague of some sort, rather than poison as everyone had assumed off-hand?
Qyburn nodded, much more confident after having seen Lord Stark's reaction. “You mean to create a plague killer.”
Rickard Stark peered at Maester Qyburn intently for a time. “And what all do you know about it?”
“I’ve already done it,” Qyburn said.
For a moment, Luwin didn’t realize what he’d just heard. The old man sounded like a smarmy lickspittle.
Rickard Stark certainly seemed astounded enough himself.
“It’s not perfected,” Qyburn amended after. “The results are unstable. The first set of steps of a larger process I’ve yet to undertake. That, I assume, is what most of the reagents you sent buyers for are meant to fix? Whoever started down this path is a genius. Let me meet them and I’ll complete the work, my lord, I promise you.”
Lord Stark continued to just stand there and look at the maester until Qyurn started fidgeting, before addressing Archmaester Marwyn again. “You collect interesting strays, Archmaester.” The Lord glanced at Qyburn’s chain. “Or perhaps not quite a stray in this case.”
“He wasn’t gonna last much longer at the Citadel anyway,” Marwyn grunted. “He’s been cutting people open while they’re still alive. Oh, and he’s also looking into necromancy. Speaking of which,” Marwyn started to dig through his pockets as if it meant nothing that everyone from Luwin to Lord Stark were staring at him in disbelief over what he’d just thrown out there. Or, in Qyburn’s case, outright horror. “Here it is!”
Qyburn reeled, tried to catch the thrown object, failed and flailed all the way to the ground to pick it up. A link. A chain link made of valyrian steel. It glinted in the pale light of winter. It glinted like a similar link
already glinted on the chain around his neck, even so far away.
On noticing everyone’s attention on him, Qyburn hunched on himself. “… They were none of them uwilling,” he said weakly.
Luwin wondered, perhaps madly, if that even implied sanity when it could just as easily be because Qyburn didn’t look like he could force anyone to do anything at all. Of course they weren’t unwilling, they were dead! And what’s this about cutting the living?
“Qyburn here’s about as ingratiating as anyone you’ll ever meet,” Marwyn supplied ‘helpfully.’ “Take him on and let him research what he wants on his own time and he’ll stick with you until he dies. Put him under someone with actual scruples and it’ll all work out.”
Luwin stared. So did everyone else.
Marwyn ignored them, spat a glob of phlegm to the side, staining the snow red, then subjected the high lord in their midst to the hardest gaze Luwin had ever seen on him. “Now, my Lord Stark. Let’s discuss terms.”
“Excuse me?”
Marwyn gave a ghastly smile, his teeth stained with the red juice of the sourleaf he chewed even now. “I helped bring down the grey rats because our interests aligned. I gave what little assistance I could to your book requisition because I wanted Hother and whoever else you won to your side to finish their studies properly. I delivered young Luwin to you because I wanted to rescue my young pupil from overzealous Hightower soldiery. And I endorsed whoever I could from these men and children because I felt them worth the trouble. But I never agreed to endorse
you. I never said I’d pledge my service to you either. I like what I’ve seen of you so far, but first impressions sour quickly. So tell me, Lord Warden. Why should I pledge myself to you when I can have my pick of hundreds of others? Why should I back your grand ambitions when I could just retire and write my books in peace and quiet? Why should I help you break the Citadel’s spine instead of leaving on another journey to the east? Why should I entrust these children with you, even? Instead of taking them with me to nurture them myself?”
Luwin had thought for days that he’d gone mad. Then he thought the world had gone mad. Now he
knew with total certainty that his mad master had gone even madder than everything else in Luwin’s life combined.
But instead of spite or malice or censure or rebuke, the only thing that could be heard in the wake of that brazen challenge was a free, rumbling laughter.
“Aha…” Lord Rickard Stark sighed when he was done, aware but unbothered by Marwyn’s way of diverting his attention from Qyburn and the rest. “Tell me, Archmaester. Does the citadel teach anything about tooth drawing?”
Marwyn blinked in obvious surprise. “… I won’t talk about that out in the open.”
Eh?
“Inside then, while the young ones get ready to leave.”
As they were led into the inn, Luwin found himself experiencing no small amount of shock he couldn’t quite contain. For a moment there, he could have sworn Marwyn the Mage had actually looked embarrassed.
They ended up in the Quill and Tankard’s common room, sat around the longtable nearest to the fireplace blazing from the wall along the eastern side.
“Eat, drink, rest your feet and try not to murder each other,” Marwyn told them before he followed Lord Stark to some private chamber or other.
Looking over his traveling companions, Luwin realized that was the first time they’d all been together in one place. It was an awkward feeling. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. Neither did anyone else, it seemed. They ate mostly in silence, contemplating their hearty meals as much as they did each other. Everyone was either first man or northman, just like Hother had told him. Most were much like him as well, lacking other prospects outside the Citadel. Some seemed far too young to have their lives turned upside down as well, let alone traveling for sennights and moons in winter. Then again, how many more had been close enough to one or more of the executed archmaesters to suffer the same?
The awkwardness stretched long after they finished eating and began nursing what drink they could or couldn’t stomach.
Then Mullin dug through his travel pack and pulled out something which he dropped on the table in front of him. A ring of chains. It thunk dully on the wood. “For those who don’t know, name’s Mullin. No last name.”
For someone who could convey everything else so well, the man was short on details when it came to himself. His chain links were barely half the story, and not the best light to judge him by when you counted them. One grey steel link for smithing, one black steel for architecture and engineering, one black iron for ravenry, two silver links for healing or he’d not have been brought on at all. The only standout was the set of three links of grey iron signifying knowledge of warcraft. For a man of three and twenty years sent to the Citadel at eight name days, it was a small number indeed. But they didn’t speak of his endurance, his athletics skill or the strength only Hother barely surpassed him in. They didn’t talk of his freakish observational skills and his ability to replicate any physical feat within the space of an hour. There was a reason he was considered more a fighter than maester material, and it wasn’t lack of a brain. To say nothing of his willingness to cut through any horseshit, like when Boar would wake up and narrowly ‘miss’ stabbing whichever of them had roused him from his beauty sleep. More than that, the man had an intrinsic ability to lead by example that Luwin had very rarely seen before the past few days.
Mullin was wasted as a scholar, Luwin thought but didn’t say. Case in point, everyone soon followed in his proverbial footsteps and presented their own links as well.
There was young Colemon, a thin lad with a long, skinny neck. He had the expected black iron link for ravenry, three links of silver for healing and one link of platinum representing natural science. There was Gulian, short and brown-haired with blue eyes. He had a link of ravenry and two silvers of his own, but also one link of brass for animal husbandry, as well as one of antimony signifying knowledge of the wilds. There was the plump, red-headed Frenken with his two silver, one brass and one antimony, but also a lead link for diplomacy, three whole black iron links in ravenry, and one pewter link in agriculture, cooking and foraging. His friend Medrick came next, their bond clear from the
four links of ravenry he brought with him, plus one in warcraft, one copper link for history, and one link for mathematics and economics made of yellow gold.
After so many before him, Tybald Snow seemed to find his courage. He was a red-haired and round-shouldered man with close-set eyes. It would have been easy to dub him a craven from his manner alone during the short time they were together. Luwin wasn’t so sure though. No small number of lords considered it a good trait in a maester, he knew. But Tybald’s choice of specialties belied it. Three silver for healing, three lead links in diplomacy, one link in mathematics, those were reasonable enough, though healing already demanded a strong stomach. But he also had three brass links for animal husbandry and just as many antimony links in surviving the wild. Didn’t speak so much of cowardice as of preference for beasts, perhaps coupled with a hard-earned, more specific fear of men? Highborn men specifically, maybe. A specific highborn man perhaps?
Assuming Luwin wasn’t just overreaching.
Tybald’s knowledge at his young age seemed to intimidate those remaining. Luwin decided he may as well take his turn. Three silver links for healing, three black iron for ravenry, three copper for history, three links in mathematics made of yellow gold, one lead link for diplomacy, one tin for pottery, one electrum link in logistics, one pewter in agriculture, one bronze in astronomy, he even had three zinc links signifying languages. High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari and Old Tongue, learned from Hother. Hesitating, he then placed the valyrian steel link down as well.
Raising his head, he found most everyone else giving him looks ranging from admiring to intimidated. He tried not to feel overly proud, but it was difficult. At five and ten name days of age, that number of links meant he’d learned three links per year without fail.
And finished his time as a scribe younger than most others there had been when they came to the Citadel in the first place.
Hother seemingly decided that was as good a time as any to take a break from going back and forth for new orders and otherwise mothering the increasingly daunted younger generation. He sat down and tossed his ring of links next to the growing pile. Two silver healing, three antimony for surviving the wilds, three agriculture links of pewter, three pottery links of tin, three grey steel links for smithing, three grey iron for warcraft, three electrum links for stewardship and logistics and one yellow gold link of mathematics. Luwin once more resented him being denied the red gold link of jewelcraft. Looking closer, Luwin tried to see if – yes. The zinc link was there as well. It was the first one Hother had gotten, ironically. Without studying for it. He already knew both Common and Old tongues when he came to the Citadel at age eight. At least the maesters didn’t deny him that.
“That’s it?” One of Luwin’s few juniors asked. Harmune, it turned out. Disdainfully too. Probably because he’d somehow somewhere found a skin of wine that he’d been drowning his sorrows in all the while. So much for Hother denying him and the rest of his young age-mates the right to order any spirits worth a damn from the bar. Courage in a flask, Luwin thought drily. “Aren’t you, like, dirt-old?”
“Older than any two of you together, you mean?” Hother finished for him, snatching the lad’s wineskin away. “Think you’re clever, aye? You’ve had enough today. This is mine till tomorrow.”
“No! Gimme that! S’mine!
“No. You’re dumb enough without it. And to answer your question, I’ve been busy.”
“You bastard!”
“My pa’s a randy cunt but my momma’s an honest woman, I’ll have you know.”
“Busy how?” One of the others asked. Lomys, Luwin thought. The spindly, wispy-haired Reachman. Luwin honestly hoped he toughened fast on the road because he was already worried about his weak constitution. “You could forge your chain right now with all that… I thought…”
“That I’d be a full maester by now?” Hother scoffed. “Better shit to do. Copying books on my own coin and time and sending them home, you follow? Kinda pointless now with all the boatloads setting off, but what can you do? ‘Sides, I’ve learned as much as the Citadel let me of what I wanted. Least without becoming one of’em and no way was I gonna make the vows.”
Unfortunately, that admission that he
was more than he seemed only served to leave the four boys even more intimidated.
Fortunately, Ryben, who’d been wallowing over having missed the whole episode involving Lord Stark and their distinguished ‘friend’ the Prince of Dorne, deigned to emerge from his slump enough to break the ice again. “I’ll fall on my sword, sure. Why not?” He put down two links of silver, three in history and six links made of zinc, each for one different language. Very few for someone older than Luwin’s age, but more in his specialty than anyone else there. Fitting for the Citadel’s foremost expert on banned, forbidden, fraudulent, and obscene texts. “High Valyrian, Old Ghiscari, Dothraki, Summer Tongue, Rhoynar,” Ryben said blandly. “Even Old Tongue, thanks to the brute over there.”
“And not a day goes by when I don’t regret it,” Umber groused.
Luwin shook his head at the two of them. Ryben never failed to deliver his most prurient gossip. He failed ever more rarely to supply it in Old Tongue when Hother was there. Conversely, Hother never failed to mock him for his grammar and accent being still atrocious compared to little boys of eight name days.
The spectacle did its job at least. For someone of age with Mullin, Ryben had very few links indeed. It finally coaxed compliance out of the last four boys there, none of them older than four and ten. Hother proved to have perfect timing and plied them with warm cups of tea fresh of the stove at precisely the right time. All the while Mullin, sat between them like he was their only pillar of strength.
They boys would be pissing for hours when all the drink caught up to them, but they served their end.
Harmune sullenly showed off his lone antimony link for survivalism and the two silver links they’d all expected. Lomys turned out to have two healing links of his own, one ravenry, one mathematics link in gold, and even one of electrum in logistics. It was Wendamyr
Pike, though (a bastard son of Lord Harlaw of the Iron Islands!) that could well turn out to be one of the most important of them all: besides the two silver links as healer, he had two blue steel links in seamanship. Which, in Citadel terms, meant less navigation and more the design and construction of watercraft. The lad also came with one link in warcraft and had been well on the way to getting his first black steel in engineering as well when the Great Deratting hit.
“Why are you even here?” Harmune asked sullenly. Suspicious too, but mostly sullen. “You could go back home with your blue steel alone.”
“Because my old man was gonna kill me,” Wendamyr flatly said, shutting him up quite nicely. “Never was much for finger dance, see? Big shame for the Lord of Harlaw to have such a coward grown out of his seed, if you follow me. Gave my mama to the drowned men, he did. Turns out what’s dead just stays dead most of the time. My trueborn brother’s the one who got me outta there. Joke’s on the old cunt, though. Rodrik likes reading even more than I do.”
Doubtlessly it was more complex than that, but everything was. “And then you got tangled with the grey rats,” Luwin guessed.
“Unfortunately.”
At the end, only young Rhodry was left. He had three links of silver and nothing else. The scrutinising stares he received were not borne with any sort of grace. The boy seemed on the verge of bursting into tears of humiliation before anyone even said anything. As if it was a small thing to be able to brew poisons, make medicines and sew people back together when you were just… “Rhodry, how old are you?”
“… Two and ten.”
What? How early did he get his growth spurt? That was too young, too young by far! Did he not have anyone-?
“How long’ve you been at the citadel,” Ryben asked before Luwin could, prompting a sharp look from Hother and Mullin both.
“Six name days.”
Far too young, but that made six years for just three links? Something smelled ripe, and not in a good way. “Rhodry,” Luwin said slowly as his thoughts sought the puzzle pieces missing from his mind. “When did you become an acolyte?”
“… This year.”
That was an even bigger puzzle piece than he expected. Except it didn’t fit anywhere at all. “When exactly?”
“… Eight moonturns ago? Nine?”
“You mean to tell me…” Luwin said flatly. “That you stayed a novice for five years and change?”
“I guess…”
“You mean to tell me,” Luwin pushed, unimpressed with his shameful tone. “That you then somehow earned three links in less than a year?”
The lad seemed to shrink on himself, as if he weren’t already. “I’d already been learning on my own time?”
“Except that only
acolytes treat novices like they’re lackwits, not the maesters. And you couldn’t have gotten far with just the open lectures. Healing requires -“
“Luwin,” Mullin said suddenly, looking at him pointedly. “Methinks you’re sounding upset he went one better.”
Did the man just imply Luwin was feeling inferior to that small child? Luwin paused at the uncharacteristic behaviour. Mullin didn’t tease often. Actually, Luwin barely remembered him teasing anyone ever, unless it was to distract them from-
His mental puzzle suddenly found the unexpected piece slotting in far too easily. Looking over Rhodry more carefully, it occurred to Luwin that he sat closest to Mullin but far from the next man over. In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d stuck to the man closest all that time but always farthest apart from everyone else. Maybe not a self-centered cheat before his first shorthair, then. But if not that, then what?
“Right,” he said, hoping he wasn’t giving anything away. “My apologies, young one. I got a little carried away there.”
“… You’re not much older than me but whatever.”
Their table fell under an odd, not entirely comfortable silence as people stopped just that tiny bit short of the point where they dared make small talk.
Luwin preferred it. He had a lot to think about. A boy of two and ten with voice barely half-way broken had learned three links in one of the most demanding subjects in less time than Luwin managed when he was at his best. Yet, somehow, that talent hadn’t emerged for over five years leading up to it. Even accounting for the year it might have taken the boy to learn his letters in Scribe’s Hearth, that left five years just gone to waste. What had he been doing all that time?
Or, perhaps, what had been done
to him that he was held back for so long?
Bullying perhaps? Somehow, he didn’t think so.
It was only later that day while they were getting ready to leave that he caught Mullin alone and discreetly inquired further on the situation. The answer left him feeling sick.
“Be glad you already knew your letters when you arrived,” Mullin said lowly once he concluded his sordid explanation. “Kid only got set loose when his growth spurt came in and his voice broke. Fuckers lost interest after that. Or that’s what I’m letting the kid think. He would’ve turned up dead in a ditch long before this if that were it. I figure he’s pretty enough that the good maester at the Scribe’s Hearth might’ve put the word out with the wrong people in advance. Or they were planning to send him back to the septons that raised him to it, once he was old enough for different tastes. Who the fuck even knows what deals are made in the mansions of the pious?”
Holy fuck. “You mean-“
“Yes.”
“The maester-
“Not in the rats.”
“Fuck.”
“Lord Stark put a word with Ser Baelor Hightower the day before yesterday, but who knows if anything comes of it?”
Would anything come of it at all? “How do you know all this?” Luwin weakly asked when he had no other words left.
“Found the kid in an alley. Right mess of fright he was. Got him away just before the Hightower patrol passed by. Kid was finally starting to understand how messed up his life was. Thought the purge was because of the ones who’d done all that to him. He didn’t take it well when I told him what was really going on. That’s when the whole story came spilling out.”
They left Oldtown within a turn of the hourglass that same New Year’s Day, well before the first garlands and streamers timidly rose into the air. Either the people of Oldtown were too afraid to celebrate anything while the Stark was there, or the Hightowers had stomped on any plans for such until the northmen left. That Baelor Hightower personally escorted their party out of the city – lacking his eponymous ‘brightsmile’ the whole way – made Luwin lean towards the second possibility.
New Year’s Day. Luwin had completely forgotten about it. And by the time he was reminded, he just didn’t care. His mind was too occupied with thoughts of maesters, septons and mass purges.
He’d thought it had gone too far. Now he was seriously wondering if maybe it hadn’t gone far enough.
