Archive of Our Own

“Only with her hands does she not touch him. With her eyes she touches and he is touched. What if she couldn’t see him? She would touch him with her ears, with her voice, with silence. There are so many ways of touching without touching, without touching be touched, to be in the continuity of the real.”

– Hélène Cixous, Poetry in painting: writings on contemporary arts and aesthetics

I.

In the light of thrashing embers he held Jon Snow close.

One heavy arm around Satin’s neck. One around the crutch. Like some great shambling beast they staggered, trudging black dirt through red snowdrifts, every so often pausing before some wildling body or another for reasons Satin had become too tired to puzzle out. Both of them were stained something awful by hot oil, blood, bow grease and smoke, though their blacks were too black to tell.

Ash and snow danced in tight circles, backlit by the fire that had become of the great stair. And the stables, and the common hall. Faint lights blinked in the towers where brothers were lowering their bows. Somewhere faraway, someone– perhaps the wind– was screaming. It sounded familiar. It sounded terribly strange.

They almost tripped over a boy that seemed all of thirteen, face smeared with pimples. He was gasping out shallow breaths, eyes unclear. Jon made a sound halfway to a whimper and nearly fell. Satin gripped him by the chest as he dropped to a knee, watching his dark eyes grow darker. Watching his jaw set.

Jon Snow. Some enigma he was. Some half-legend or another told by a fool with a grudge in a whisper over the din. The turncloak, they called him. The warg. A hot-blooded bastard. A force of nature, a king’s brother, a wolf in the night. Some wolf he was. Some wildling, mayhaps, or some great lord. To hear them tell it. He had heard them tell all of it.

None of it was true. Perhaps all of it was true. Satin could not quite figure out which. His body ached and his head felt full of glass. With a start, his torch wavering a little too close, he saw a bolt in the boy’s ragged side. Then he realized he had shot so many wildlings in the battle he could not remember if this had been one of them. He began to quiver so badly then he almost dropped the torch– then, almost dropped Jon. The dying boy’s breaths grew shallower. Eyes more glassy. He almost hacked out a word, before. Satin turned away. Looked at Jon. Though that was worse. He had forgotten Jon was half a boy as well.

A boy of sixteen with a horse face, kneeling in blood.

They both rose at once, knees knocking into each other’s. Satin dizzy, Jon not quite there. Heavy breaths; no words at all. And all of a sudden Jon looked so, so small. And afraid, perhaps more so than Satin had been earlier, though he had gotten them through the battle, so how could he possibly be afraid? Sunken black eyes darting over the yard. This was no wolf or lord or wildling, this was just some skinny spooked colt. A spooked colt who saved your life thrice over. A spooked colt who saved this whole castle and all of Mole’s Town. The notion sent some terrible feeling into Satin’s gut. Something unspeakable. Perhaps it was something like awe.

Pray to your new gods, he remembered Jon telling him in the throes of battle, but when Satin had reached out to the Seven he had found only silence. The drift of snow; the kickback of the crossbow; the glint of Jon’s eyes in the torchlight: that was real. That was what answered. The gods hadn’t gotten him through the battle– Jon had. Maybe that should have frightened him, but that wasn’t what he felt.

Jon tore away from him when they reached the Lord Commander’s Tower, limping forward. A wildling girl was splayed there, a sheen of ice glittering like molten silver on her freckled face and an arrow below her collarbone. At first Satin thought she was bleeding from the skull, too, but she shifted and he saw it was only her hair in the torchlight, spilling out of her hood. Jon’s face was falling apart in the manner of burning parchment. His eyes like a caught deer’s. He collapsed beside her, cradling her head; her eyes fluttered open.

They were both very quiet. Satin supposed the arrow had bit into a lung. He watched from a few yards away, tiredness settling so deep in his bones he could do nothing but watch, and wait, checking behind his shoulder every so often to make sure no brothers were coming their way. It seemed prudent, a favour for the man who’d saved his life. He barely thought anything of it. How could he?

There was an enormity to that minute. The falling ash seemed to slow in the air. Jon took the girl’s hand with a terrible gentleness and squeezed it, choking back a weak sob. Satin knew who she was, to some degree, presumably the woman he broke his vows with– though she was only half a woman in truth, and he only half an oathbreaker. With him knelt over her, whispering sweetly to her with all the strength of a reed, it all looked like something out of a play, he the darkling hero out of the songs, and her the maiden even dying prettily. The snow in her hair, that was pretty. Satin couldn’t look at her face any longer.

He turned, then, away from them. The yard was still empty, most of the brothers gathered under the Wall shouting up to the women and elderly waiting up there for the winch cage to take them back down. Snatches of words floated to him, though, from Jon and the girl. Castles and towers, luck or the lack of it, caves faraway. A whole life he’d never tell anyone about. And then: You know nothing, he heard her breathe in a heavy accent, almost incomprehensible, Jon Snow.

It was silent after that, but for the clumping noise of soft snowfall. The whisper of wind.

He felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder a few moments later. Jon’s face was still as stone, not betraying any feeling, and he whispered, “Thank you,” in a thick voice. Satin just nodded, too exhausted to offer any comfort and not so sure it would be welcome either way. Jon leaned on him all the way back to the remnants of the burning stair, body crushingly warm, until they were near enough his quarters that he broke off again to leave, looking back at Satin briefly with wet eyes and then turning to go.

Satin stared at his back dully as he stumbled through the door. He felt at once a swell of mad fondness and a weighty burden on his heart. He wanted in one moment to call out, or perhaps to follow him, and in the next to drag him to Aemon’s to ensure he got his wounds looked at properly, but then all of a sudden Pyp and Grenn had found him and were asking him questions and the moment fell from his grasp, and he turned from the door and let himself be lead away.

II.

That was the last time he truly spoke to Jon for a long while. The battles went on and on every day and did not end, until the wildlings were defeated in an hour by shining knights waving bright golden banners, as if their weeks of firing arrows atop the Wall mattered as much as a toddler slinging stones. Everything became a blur after that, circumstances changing at Castle Black so quickly Satin barely knew what to do with himself. Jon had trained him at swords, once, though it had made him feel a foppish fool. Then Jon had been elected Lord Commander of the Watch, shock blazing on his face when the raven called his name. Then Satin barely saw him around at all, but he looked somehow taller, graver, more morose, at least from a distance. Which was truly saying something. That wasn’t quite surprising, but it left Satin ill at ease. Though Bowen Marsh kept him so busy all day he hardly had time to worry about it, and to be fair, it wasn’t exactly his problem.

And to be fair, nobody else seemed to care a whit.

“It’s not right,” Pyp moaned into a mug of ale, again. “We’re the whole bloody reason he’s lord commander instead of Slynt anyway, but no, not a word to us since then except for when he’s giving orders. Orders! And then he goes and beheads the man without so much as a warning like it’s a day out to market for him! It’s like he’s become a whole different person. Every day it’s all, Lord Snow this, Lord Snow that. That was a nickname once! A nickname! And he hated it!”

Halder blinked. “I swear you’ve said this same thing every night for the past week.”

“Well, I’m not wrong, am I?”

They were piled into the cellar below the armoury that had become their makeshift dining hall, eating mashed turnips and complaining, as was their usual routine. The hall was mostly buzzing with spirited discussions about Janos Slynt’s surprise beheading earlier, which would surely turn into brawls later in the night. A haze of smoke and the smell of roasted meat hung in the air. Satin picked at his food listlessly, listening to the same conversation play out as it did near-daily. He was incurably tired of hearing about Jon Snow, particularly from his friends.

Grenn spoke while chewing. “He’s only so angry at Jon because he misses him. We all miss him.” He swallowed, screwing up his mouth into an uncomfortable frown. “You know, this one time beyond the Wall, he told me Lord Stark always told him he should sit amongst his men and make friends of them. Like it was a lesson. He grew up thinking he’d have men.” It was almost hilariously morose; sometimes Grenn was just like that, though. There was a dragging silence as he took another bite. “What did he want me to say to that?”

“What an arse,” Emrick muttered into his spoon.

Hop-Robin grimaced. “It’s all he knows, though, isn’t it? That lordly sort of thing?”

“Yeah, but,” said Arron, “he’s not got to be such a ponce about it.” Satin wasn’t sure Arron had ever even spoken to Jon.

“He’s always been a ponce about everything,” Toad groaned.

“Do you think,” Pyp interrupted, half leaning into Grenn, “Stannis buggers him?”

Satin barked out a laugh. The other boys turned to stare at him wide-eyed, as if he’d grown a second head. “What? It was funny.” He shot Pyp a knowing smile and cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe he buggers Stannis?”

Toad almost snorted wine out of his nose.

Satin smiled to look at them, his motley group of mostly-friends. It only stung a little that half a year ago, most of them had hated him. Though he took a perverse pride in that as well, and in how well he’d gotten to know each of them after such little time. Halder was honest and ever-practical. Toad was somewhat slimy, but well-informed, and he gossiped like a fishwife. Arron and Emrick were simple enough creatures, but Arron was charming wherever Emrick was gentle. Matthar was godly to the end, but liked when you listened to his talk of dreams. Owen was soft-headed, Hop-Robin sharp as a tack. He hadn’t known Sam long by the time he’d been carted down to Oldtown, but he seemed a darling fool as well.

Grenn was soft-hearted, sincere and sweet, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Pyp wasn’t quite sweet, but he was at least earnest when afraid. Mostly he was on a half-mad quest to take nothing seriously, especially not himself. Grenn, though, took care to keep him smiling. Though it put a stab of misery in Satin’s gut sometimes to look at them.

The conversation turned to japes about Slynt, then talk of the wildlings and what Jon meant to do with them. “We were just fighting them,” ranted Horse, the newest recruit, a towheaded boy from Mole’s Town. It of course followed that wildlings were a sore spot for him. “He led us like such a warrior and all. That’s what they wanted, to come through the Wall, and we beat them. We stopped them. But he’s letting them past anyway. Tell me how that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t,” said Halder flatly. “Mully told me Stannis means to make them his own army of savages, that’s why they’re being let through. And anyway, Lord Snow’s half a wildling now. He had a wildling wife, last I heard.”

There had been snow on her forehead. Her hair like fled blood.

“That’s not fair,” Grenn countered quickly. “He led us in the battles. He never broke his vows, you heard him, he was under orders. And most of these wildlings are women and children, they’ll do no harm.”

Matt sneered. That was unlike him, but he had been injured fighting at Greyguard and had come back sullen. “No harm? The women are rotten, the children just as bad. They’ll be raised raiders, they will.”

Satin thought of that boy with the pimples, and the bolt in his side, and said nothing.

He left the hall early claiming his stomach was aching; Toad had started singing, which never ended very well, and suddenly all their banter had become very tiring. Though it was full dark and beginning to snow, the yard was bustling. Stannis’ men were huddled together in small groups, identifiable by fine furs that came in colours other than black. None looked twice at Satin, just another lightfoot black brother wandering the grounds. Stewards and builders were running about, still fixing up casualties from the wildlings’ attacks, or else seeing to the pens of free folk kept outside the gate.

Septon Cellador, tottering by in the direction of the sept, gave him one of his cursory sneers.

“Fine evening, Septon?” Satin asked loudly, with a wide grin. Courtesy, when there isn’t any armour. And this, when there isn’t any courtesy. The old man clenched his jaw and walked on.

He reached the Grey Keep, where he kept his meagre room, and was about to head inside when he heard an odd little noise, almost like a yelp. With nothing much better to do, he stole around the edge of the building to the back, at the very edge of the castle grounds, where the grey stone ended and the flat white plains of the Gift began. He saw a dark figure there between snowdrifts, hunched over, starkly outlined against the frozen waste. In the middle distance something was moving, sending up flurries of white. And then the noise again. Only then Satin realized it was laughter.

Lit only by the moon, the direwolf was rolling in snow.

Dark red eyes glinted against white fur as the massive beast whined and snapped its jaw. Jon Snow tackled it, rubbing its sprawling silvered belly with abandon. The two play-fought for a bare moment, Jon laughing a young boy’s laugh, the scar across his eye creasing with the width of his smile. He’d taken off his lord’s face. Satin was surprised to see that he was capable of grinning. The wolf pounced on Jon, knocking him flat on his back and licking at his face, leaving him spluttering like a fool. He shoved some snow into the beast’s face in retribution.

A light laugh burbled from Satin’s lips as well, at the sight of it. Perhaps too loudly. Then Jon turned his head and saw him. At once his face closed off, like a portcullis, only betrayed by his darting eyes and the creep of a blush over his skin; he got up from the ground quick as a snake, Lord Snow once again, brushing the snowflakes off his sleeve. Satin immediately cringed, making an apologetic expression and an aborted gesture, and he found himself stepping closer almost despite himself.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” he started, raising his voice over the wind, making a point of it not to stumble on his words. “I didn’t mean to…” But a smile crept across his face anyway. “Pry.”

Jon kept his own mouth well-guarded, it seemed. “I’m sorry you had to see that. Ghost needs his exercise, is all.” The great white wolf had curled up in the snow with mischief in its eyes, tail thumping the ground.

Sorry? It was unbearably sweet. Satin almost laughed again, right in his face, but he kept his composure. “I’ll leave you to your… exercise, then, my lord.”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “I would appreciate that.”

Gods, maybe Stannis really is buggering him. He nodded slightly. He waited for a generous moment, but Jon stayed stock still, so he waved a hand. “Good night, my lord.”

“Good night.”

As he backed away, Jon’s expression stayed exactly the same, statuesque and vaguely above-it-all. Sometimes, back in the brothel, his lordly clientele had tried the same trick. Furrowed eyebrows, a flat frown, a general air of I don’t truly want to be here. It didn’t much matter. All of them came apart in the end.

And just as he knew would happen, as he turned away, in the corner of his eye he saw them begin to play again, Jon breaking out into an embarrassed smile. For some reason, it made Satin achingly sad. He thought of that wildling girl again, how small Jon had looked then. He’d still told no one of what happened. He wondered if Jon was grateful, or whether he remembered Satin had been there at all.

He’d chosen to bed down in the Grey Keep– it was the oldest and the least populated. Most stayed in the Flint Barracks nearby everyone else, but Satin didn’t quite have the luxury of trusting his neighbours. His room was draughty and his bed impossibly old, but he worried somewhat less about men breaking down his door in the night, so it felt worth it. He didn’t bother to decorate it– he didn’t have anything to decorate it with, but for the foggy mirror he’d found hanging in an abandoned solar and stolen for himself. He looked in it now, practicing his own lord’s face for a moment, then taking his hair down, brushing it lock by lock with a little ivory comb he’d won by chance in a game of tiles.

In Oldtown his room had been swathed in soft purple silks. But it wouldn’t do to dwell on that, not now, not so far from home. He grabbed his little glass bottle of perfume– the only thing he’d brought all the way from Oldtown, to Gulltown, to the Wall– and frowned upon noticing it was nearly empty. He supposed a year would do that to a bottle. Where in seven hells am I going to get perfume at the Wall?

It was silly, he knew. An absurd indulgence in a place where the cold neutered most everyone’s scent anyway. But a whore had certain standards, and he was hardly going to let go of them now.

Be cautious and courteous. Learn to read a face. Learn to read a room. Act only a little above your station. The mantras he’d taught himself in Oldtown ran through his mind almost as a reflex. Betray no thoughts but ones that might please. Let them imagine what they’d like. Never laugh at a nobleman. A doll does not bite back.

He sighed, unbuttoning his jerkin. One day he wouldn’t have to remember any of that.

III.

The day the wildlings knelt dawned bright and warm, and he was wanted in the courtyard.

“Satin,” Bowen Marsh said with a curt nod, hailing him over, “The Lord Commander says you’re to help lead the wildling prisoners through the gate after they kneel. You and that boy Hareth, let him know.” His eyes were blankly disrespectful, as if he barely saw Satin at all. “Go on through the gate, unless you feel you can’t lift a torch.”

He almost said, I’ve killed ten men. Then, more than ten, probably, only I stopped counting after I doused the Thenns with boiling oil. But Bowen Marsh probably didn’t want to hear about that.

“Yes, my lord,” he said instead. And went.

The black brothers filed through the tunnel and stood in rank, but Satin hung back by the gate with Horse and Edd. Stannis Baratheon’s pageantry was a wonder to behold– but mostly that of his red woman. She made a grand speech of it to the stockades of wildlings, talking of good and evil, true gods and false. Stannis hardly said anything at all, just watched on with hungry eyes.

They’d put Mance Rayder in a weeping wooden cage. Satin didn’t know his face, but it seemed to shift by the moment, creasing in pain and then loathing and then fear and then spite. When they burned him, he looked away. He looked at Jon, who seemed made of stone. Learn to read a face, he reminded himself, but there was nothing there. Then he looked at Ghost, whose eyes burned. Like blood. Like sap.

Suddenly Satin couldn’t bear the screams. A good thing, then, that the archers shot Mance a moment later. Jon’s face changed very slightly after giving the command. A wistfulness behind the eyes. His mouth moved wordlessly, as if in prayer. Or eulogy. The Wall wept silently behind them.

He was watching him so closely he barely noticed the glowing sword. Only that it cast red light on the snow, on the wildlings, on the Wall. “Kneel and live,” Stannis was saying. “Or go and die. The choice is yours.” That’s no choice, Satin almost said. But he had no one to say it to.

When the wildlings knelt, some cried. Some stared dully forward. It hurt them more to burn their weirwood branches, he saw.

He led the first group of kneelers through the Wall, waving his torch high and trying to put on a friendly face for them. That was hard. Most were half-starved and broken-looking. One little girl tripped and fell on the ice, and when he lifted her up she fell into his arms and sobbed. Bewildered, he patted her hair gently and sent her on her way, only to realize she’d left a cloth doll in the crook of his arm. When he got out of the tunnel, he stopped a dark-haired spearwife and begged her to ask around and find the girl, to take it back to her. The confusion on her face half broke his heart, but she agreed, eyes wet and shining. It seemed such a small and pitiful gesture, though. The smell of smoke lingered in his hair for hours.

That night in the cellar hall the mood was rowdy. Satin figured most of them were drinking to forget Mance Rayder’s screams. Which was certainly fair. But talk quickly turned to politics, and that seemed moderately ill-advised, everyone riled up as they were.

“It seems King Stannis has a master mummer snapping at his heels,” Pyp was saying, with a grin. “And I should know, as a master mummer myself.”

“Former master mummer,” Grenn teased.

“Former master mummer,” he conceded. “It’s all in the hands, truly. Watch her at the nightfires. She slips this powder into the flames when she wants it to grow, or make shapes, or change colours.”

“So she’s no true witch?” Halder asked.

“Well, I didn’t say that.”

“All that talk of false kings was ridiculous,” Hop-Robin cut in with a roll of his eyes. “Jon Snow’s a more rightful king than Stannis Baratheon.”

“Mother have mercy, can you imagine?”

Arron laughed. “What’s the story they’ve got? King Tommen’s the Kingslayer’s get?” He tilted his head. “Well, he could be.”

“Yeah, but Stannis is nearly bald,” said Toad. “Have you ever heard of a bald king?”

Satin grinned. “Yes, Todder, because it’s comeliness that matters in ruling.”

“Well, it is! He always looks as if someone shat in his bed. It isn’t becoming.”

“I wish it was comeliness that mattered most,” Satin moaned, putting on a foppish voice. “Then I’d be lord commander, and you lot’d all have to be my handmaidens.” Most everyone laughed. He pretended not to see Matthar’s eyes roll.

“Well,” said Grenn, “at least he has the witch beside him. She does help a bit.” Pyp elbowed him sharply. “A bit, I said!”

Pyp snorted and speared a turnip with his dagger. “The night is dark and full of turnips,” he mocked lowly, adopting Melisandre’s warm, lilting accent. “Let us pray for venison, my children, with some onions and a bit of tasty gravy.” Satin laughed at the husk he’d put in his voice.

But suddenly everyone fell silent. He turned around to see that Jon Snow had come to join them, snowflakes still dappling his cloak. His dark eyebrows were furrowed. “Making mock of another man’s prayer is fool’s work, Pyp. And dangerous,” he said, all cautious. His lord’s face was on again.

Pyp’s eyes narrowed, snake-like, at the word fool. “If the red god’s offended, let him strike me down,” he challenged with an easy grin.

Satin felt it prudent to cut in before things got any worse. “It was the priestess we were laughing at. We were only having a jape, my lord.”

Jon looked at him sharply. “You have your gods and she has hers. Leave her be.”

Satin was about to say something very clever about where the red woman could stick her stupid god, the image of the little girl’s doll like a stuck knife in his mind, but Toad got there first. “She won’t let our gods be. She calls the Seven false gods, m’lord. She made the wildlings burn weirwood branches. You saw.”

He remembered the tear tracks on their faces. The awful smell of smoke and flesh. It almost overpowered his surprise at Toad of all people making a salient point. But Jon only said, “Lady Melisandre is not part of my command. You are. I won’t have bad blood between the king’s men and my own.” Again, his face betrayed nothing. Half a wildling, my arse.

It didn’t seem fair. Satin bit back a retort, but Pyp interrupted again, hopping up from his bench. “Fear not, brave Toad, for our Great Lord Snow has spoken.” He even gave Jon a low bow, mischief and anger battling in his gaze. Satin would’ve laughed if it did not seem so dangerous. “I beg pardon. Henceforth, I shall not even waggle my ears save by your lordship’s lordly leave.”

Jon looked desperately uncomfortable, standing there in the middle of the hall. He also looked like he could throttle Pyp himself. “Waggle your ears all you like,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s your tongue waggling that makes the trouble.”

Grenn cleared his throat, yanking Pyp back down to his seat by the shirt. “‘l’ll see that he’s more careful,” he swore to Jon, “and I’ll clout him if he’s not.” Pyp lifted his head to look at Satin, mouthing Clout me? with a cocked eyebrow and a faux panic. Satin had to stifle a laugh.

It seemed to pacify Jon, at least. He almost turned to go, but Grenn spoke again.

“My lord… will you sup with us? Owen, shove over and make room for Jon.” He remembered that story of Grenn’s, about Lord Stark telling Jon to sit and eat with his men, given as a child’s lesson.

But the lesson didn’t seem to reach Lord Snow in this moment at all. His face crumpled a bit, that strange sullen wistfulness from earlier still glinting in his eyes. “Another day,” he said quietly, turning around, telling Edd to leave him, and he ascended back up the cellar steps.

None of them spoke for a stretch, everyone looking at each other with wide, cowed eyes.

“Well,” said Pyp into the silence. “It appears Satin was right. He’s buggering Stannis for certain.”

Before dawn that morning Satin woke to rapid knocking on the door. He wrestled himself out of bed, bleary-eyed.

“Let us in, you dolt, we’ve news,” came the cry. He did so. Pyp and Grenn all but tumbled into his room, faces smeared with misery.

“Eastwatch. Bloody Eastwatch,” Pyp snapped as soon as the door closed. “The great Lord Snow’s sending us away.” His voice was full of venom.

Satin put his hand on his arm to steady him. “What? Now?” His heart crumpled.

Grenn nodded. “At dawn. Halder ’n Toad are going off to the Shadow Tower, as well. Like he’s pushing us all away at once.”

The sadness in his voice was almost too much to bear. Immediately he recalled Jon Snow’s face, and understood. “Well, at least he isn’t splitting you two,” he said, trying his best to be cheerful. “And you can learn to fish.”

Pyp mimed retching. He made as if he was about to say something, then thought against it and instead just hugged Satin, quickly, tightly. “I’ll miss you,” he murmured into his shoulder.

Satin separated himself, and found himself welling up with tears. He blinked them back. “I’ll miss both of you,” he said, voice clear as bells despite everything.

Grenn excused himself with a final nod of farewell, his neck flushed and red. Pyp turned to Satin, then, pressed a bundle into his chest. “Here. You should have this.”

He took it and unwrapped the cloth. Inside was was a thin leather-bound book, and a small pouch of coins. “I– I can’t take this, Pyp.” The book was called The Lord of the Woeful Countenance. The coins were silver.

“Too bad,” Pyp muttered. “It’s rude to return a gift, you know.”

He looked at the other boy, whose ears had gone red. “At least take the coins back,” he pressed. “They’re yours.”

“They’re truly not.”

Unwilling to fight on it, he placed the items gently on his desk. “Stay safe,” he said after a long silence. It was all he could think to say. “You and him, alright?”

They stood there for a moment in the first pearls of morning light, studying each other’s faces. “Thank you for everything, then.” Pyp swallowed, managing a grin. “Whore though you may be.”

“Likewise,” said Satin. “Fool though you are.”

IV.

The night was crisp, the moon high in an unblinking sky. He padded around the grounds, boots sinking into fresh snow, drinking in the clear quiet. For once it seemed no one else was out. Stannis’ host had departed a week ago, and now the castle seemed all but abandoned. Which fit his needs tonight astoundingly well.

This scheme is so stupid. But his perfume had finally run out. What else was he to do? Mole’s Town was mostly destroyed, and it wasn’t as if any flowers grew anywhere nearby. It certainly wasn’t as if he could just put in a request to Bowen Marsh.

The seven oils of the Faith were well-known to Satin. He ticked them off in his head as he walked. Olive oil, the base, for the Father; sweet calamus flower for the Mother. Hot cinnamon for the Warrior. Smoky myrrh for the Smith. Tall gingergrass for the Maiden. Earthy, strong cassia for the Crone. And finally a hot fire, for the Stranger, to simmer the mixture over for weeks, to be blessed and prayed over until the anointing oil finally shone like beaten gold.

Though that was not truly seven oils, but one oil with seven ingredients. Six ingredients, really. Just as there were not truly seven gods, but one god with seven aspects. A septon had explained it all to him once when he was a boy, but he only recalled the lesson giving him a headache. Whatever the case, the stuff had a heady sweet smell, and would do nicely for his purposes.

The last time he’d smelled it was in Oldtown. He wasn’t one for the sept, but once he’d seen a knighting done on the steps of the great Starry Sept, one of the younger Hightowers, fresh from some tourney or another. He’d been quite young, and far back in the crowd, but the thick smell of it had wafted even to him. No one was ever knighted at the Wall, but Satin had seen an alabaster jar of the stuff sitting on the altar regardless. Cellador surely wouldn’t miss a finger-length bottle’s worth of it. Satin tapped the stoppered glass in the pocket of his cloak absentmindedly.

He heard faint whispering and froze in place. Then, what sounded like choking. Peering around the side of the Shieldhall, he spotted two men sitting against the cobbled stone wall, murmuring to one another. He was startled to see that they were clasping hands.

They didn’t see him. One of them was weeping. He thought it might be Garth Greyfeather, and perhaps the other man was… he couldn’t recall the name. Alf, or something? He knew Garth was to leave on a ranging at dawn. They’re saying goodbye, he realized. He made sure to creep past silently, and didn’t disturb them. The snow dampened his footfalls.

The sept was dark. A few candles glinted, near all of them crowding the Warrior’s altar. Some on the Mother’s, the Father’s, the Smith’s. One lone light for the Crone. It was a marvellously tiny building, with seven wooden walls, an small altar for each of the Seven in each corner and a podium in the middle of the room where Cellador would stand and give his sermons. There the great crystal sat in its silver cup, under the light of the window in the roof where the moon smiled down, scattering impossibly faint rainbows across the floor. And there, beside the censer and the incense and a scattering of small candles, sat the jar holding the seven oils.

In other septs the Seven would normally be represented by tall statues of wood or marble, or perhaps even paintings, but not here, not at the Wall, a thousand thousand miles from anywhere else. Here, mismatched objects were bolted onto the walls above each altar, chosen in a slapdash fashion, and only vaguely seeming to fit the gods they honoured. A grain sickle for the Father; a torn lace veil for the Mother; a rusted sword for the Warrior and a hammer for the Smith; a delicate spray of glass flowers for the Maiden; an iron lamp for the Crone. He looked to the back of the sept and jumped to see eyes staring back. Above the altar for the Stranger was a white weirwood mask.

With burning eyes. Like blood. Like sap.

Transfixed, he moved towards it, studying it, its mouthlessness, the creases in the wood. For the first time, he felt… He didn’t quite know what he felt. The hammer had no eyes. The lamp was unlit. No, he was being watched by something much, much older.

Suddenly he realized he was trembling. Guilt flooded his mind. I can’t just steal from it. Not when it’s looking at me, not without praying. Blinking back dizziness he took two unlit candles from the podium, lighting them on the other candles blazing for the Warrior. He placed one delicately on the empty altar for the Maiden, admiring how the light danced in the dusty pink glass. It was an awful farce, a whore praying to the Maiden, but he did it anyway. He remembered: rough hands, the kiss of samite. The rose-tipped cheeks of the others at the brothel, young like him. Too young, like him. Smiling all the same. Protect them, he prayed, feeling at once very cold. I know you’re not meant to, but… He exhaled, his breath misting in the cold. Protect me, too. The glass flowers gently chimed.

He placed the other candle at the altar of the Stranger, if only because it didn’t feel fair that it was empty. But he was thinking of Jon Snow, sullen and severe, darkling and young-eyed. Of that hungry wolf. The wink of red and red. The seven demons, he’d heard Melisandre call the gods of the Faith at one of her nightfires. Looking at the mask, he could believe it.

Only then did he go to Cellador’s podium and unstopper the jar of oil. At once the smell of it flooded him, and with delicate hands he filled his glass bottle. It was old, thick, partly congealed at the bottom, but it wouldn’t much matter, not with small drops spread across his forehead, in the crook of his neck, rubbed between his wrists…

“What are you doing here?”

He nearly dropped the bottle. Smoothly he tucked it into his sleeve and made as if he was simply looking around. “Praying.” He looked up to see that it was Matthar, face flickering in the light of the candles, shadows distorting his face. Too late he remembered the boy cleaned out the sept every other night. He’d been a helper boy at a septry, once upon a time.

Matthar stepped forward, mouth twisting. “You don’t pray. You never pray.” He saw the candles. “You can’t pray to the Maiden, it’s not right.”

His stomach dropped. “Not even for forgiveness?” he asked lightly. Matt’s face didn’t change. “I’ll take my leave now.” His mouth had gone dry. Courtesy, when there isn’t any armour. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“That’s oil for anointing,” Matthar said lowly, with a quiet anger. So he saw. “You can’t take that, that’s sacred.”

He tried to feign innocence. “What do you mean?”

“That’s for knights.” His voice had turned acrid. “That’s for kings. You can’t have that.” He stepped closer. “Give it back. It’s not for people like you.”

“What, whores?” Satin was tired of this. “It’s not like I’m still doing it.”

Matthar hit him. Right across the head, with a loud crack and the splitting of skin. Satin fell back, hitting the back of his skull against the altar and crumpling on the floor. He let out a pained groan and tried to speak, but Matt hit him again, slapping him clear across the face, then grabbing him by the shirt. “Give it back, whore.” Ah, so you’ll say it, now?

Satin looked into his eyes and saw a battle. Anger. That was bad. Desire. That was worse. Fear, flickering. He’d get nowhere with words. Satin raised his hands, trying to cover himself. He kicked out with his foot and was pleased to feel it connect with Matthar’s stomach. But then Matt kicked back, right in his ribs. Blood was running into his eye and Matt was rummaging around in his cloak but before he could take the bottle he let out a grunt and was dragged backwards, and a hand descended in front of Satin.

“Come on, then,” came the voice, and he grabbed the hand and let himself get dragged out of the sept. Rubbing the blood from his eye and breathing hard, he looked up to see it was Arron that had brought him out. Whirling, he saw Emrick shove Matthar against a wall, and then he was being swiftly whisked away by the arm and Emrick was jogging to join them. The twins took him all the way across the grounds to the back wall of the armoury, where they leaned against the stone and caught their breath.

“That git,” raved Arron. “That stinking cruel git.”

Satin panted, his mind spinning. His head ached furiously. “What’d you do that for?”

Emrick tilted his head. “We’d been on watch. We heard, on our way back.” As if it was that simple.

“No, but why did you help me?”

They both looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “He was kicking you,” said Arron.

“I’m aware,” Satin said dryly. Then he realized he couldn’t tell them about the oil. It’s too ridiculous, to get bloodied for some stupid perfume. “I… Thank you. Genuinely. But that was ill-advised.”

Arron sniffed. “Hated Matt anyway. Him and that stupid septon.” He spat on the ground, which perhaps would’ve seemed more powerful a statement if it wasn’t a pitiful small amount of spit. “There’s for his Seven. They’ve hardly got a place here, anyway. Not in the North.”

Satin felt bizarrely touched. It was an odd sentiment, for someone from the Westerlands. “Perhaps not.” He thought of the weirwood face in the sept, stealing his gaze. “I should… go, probably. Thank you, again. You didn’t need to do that.”

Emrick nodded, his gaze full of blue concern. “Shouldn’t we get you to Clydas?”

He’ll ask too many questions. “I… slipped on a patch of ice. Hit my head. It’ll heal.”

“You’re like a battered woman, you are.” Arron laughed, but his eyes were sad. “You be safe. And if he tries anything again…”

Satin forced a smile. With a wave, he left the brothers there in the bitter cold, drawing his cloak over his arms.

He did not quite know what to make of them. Kindness had always been a pertinent reason for suspicion, and he’d never quite clung to the notion that his so-called brothers would ever truly be anything of the sort. Pyp and Grenn had been the closest, and they’d been sent away. He’d long since given up on feeling welcome anywhere. Though perhaps he’d resigned himself to a loneliness that didn’t exist.

With shaking hands he entered his room and stripped off his cloak. He took an old cloth and wiped the blood from his forehead as best he could, careful around where it was already beginning to scab. Then he placed the glass bottle containing the seven oils on his desk before the mirror.

The oil was for anointing. The oil was for knights. For rituals and prayers. And kings. It’s for kings as well.

Not for the common man. Not for some willowy Night’s Watch recruit. Certainly not for a whore.

Staring baldly at his reflection, he began, slowly, to comb it through his hair.

V.

The Wall had strange powers. Of that he was certain. The more time he spent with it, the more all his memories blurred together. Years folded like days in still images of thick yellow sunlight. Grey stone walls, red cheeks, sheets of periwinkle silk. The smell of incense, roses, the salt sea. Once there had been a boy named Michel who’d kissed him in an alleyway. He could not remember his face.

Not here, anyway. The cold sapped it all with a barren hunger. That was just its way.

He was walking atop the ice with one of the newest recruits– a wildling Jon had coaxed back from Mole’s Town, an intimidating, flat-faced older man named Leathers who’d decided to take the black. They scattered gravel over the path in silence, though theoretically Satin was meant to be explaining certain basic things to him. His head was too muddled, though. And besides, Leathers was a man grown. He knew how to scatter gravel.

Matthar had suddenly been transferred to the Nightfort the day after their fight. Those in charge of making it habitable had been begging for more men, apparently. Satin had decided not to dwell too much on how serendipitous that was, but sometimes he wondered about that weirwood Stranger, watching. Maybe something was answering his prayers after all.

“Can I ask you something?” he started, albeit unsteadily. He figured the wildling wasn’t one for casual conversation.

Leathers furrowed his brow. He had two thin black lines tattooed vertically on his forehead above each eyebrow, and another line from his lower lip to his chin, and they shifted with each change in expression. “Aye, you can.”

“About your gods, I mean.”

That got a reaction from him. “They don’t belong to me, boy,” he said with an unexpected warmth. “But if you’d like.”

Satin thought about how to word it. “The weirwoods. The faces, I mean. Are they like omens? Do they mean death?” Anyone who’d gone into the Gift to hunt or forage lately had come back reporting faces carved in the trees. Any trees.

“Death?” A low laugh. “No, not death. Truth, in a way. You can’t lie before a weirwood– or you’re not supposed to.” But the old wildling suddenly looked unsure. “Life and death, though, they don’t mean much to trees. They bleed like we do. Eat like we do. Don’t mean they die the same.”

“They eat?” Satin spluttered.

Leathers grinned toothily. “In all the old tales, aye. That’s why they bleed so red. They drink us down, and grow roots over our guts.” Then he laughed again. “No, they don’t eat, kneeler. Certain places, you find people sacrificing to the trees, that’s all. Prisoners, ’n that. Why’d you want to know, anyway?”

“Just curious.” And I’m afraid the old gods are watching me. Though afraid wasn’t quite the right word, was it? “Are the old gods… gods of anything? Like, is there a god of death, for instance?”

“What’s this fascination with death, then?”

He carried on spreading gravel as if the question hadn’t been asked at all. “The Seven has the Stranger. He’s meant to represent death, for…” Us, he almost said. But that wasn’t right either.

“Are you looking to convert?” Leathers joked. When Satin didn’t answer, his face turned puzzled. “No. The gods, they’re spirits ’n things. Don’t even have names. Stones, rivers, mountains. Birds and beasts. They live in the air. And the soil. So they say, anyhow.”

“When you pray, do they answer?”

“Can you speak to the wind?” They were quiet for a moment. “Some say they watch, through the faces. But I never heard of them giving out any boons. When trees grow arms and legs, mayhaps.” He gave Satin a coy look. “Looking for help from somewhere, boy? Better to ask those who speak the language of men.”

A sudden gale whipped their hair.

That night he had strange dreams. The sea was rising over Oldtown, dark and deep and hungry. Michel was there, but he didn’t have a face. His skin was white as snow. His eyes red as raspberries.

VI.

Satin was teaching Arron and Emrick to sew in the room beside the wool stores when they got the news. He was rather good at sewing, always helping stitch up torn silks and underclothes in Oldtown, and was attempting to figure out how to fashion his cloak so it’d hang jauntily to one side like the fashion was with capes in the Reach. He’d finished his pile of assigned alterations, anyhow, and the other two were terribly slow at theirs. Though before he could make his measurements there was a knock at the door.

Dolorous Edd popped his head in, wearing his signature downtrodden face. “I was told to find you three. To bring to the Lord Commander, as it were.”

Arron and Emrick looked blankly at each other. “For what?” Arron asked.

Edd shrugged. “He don’t tell me much. Sends me running around the castle at his whim. Worse reasons to be running, I s’pose. Last night I had a dream I was being chased through the wormways by giant ice spiders, snappin’ and biting.”

Satin grinned. “Did you get away?”

“No.” The old squire sniffed. “All those legs. They ate me up, o’ course. I’m not sure I’d taste so nice. But I eat without tasting all the time. You’d have to, with how Hobb cooks.” He sighed. “Suppose ice spiders’d be grateful for any cook at all. Something to think about.”

He turned and trudged away without another word.

Satin scratched at his stubble. It had gotten so cold, going bare-faced suddenly seemed silly. He’d taken to combing his perfume through it; it at least helped with the itch. “You don’t reckon we’re in trouble, are we?”

“Could be about Matt,” Emrick said worriedly. “Maybe they found out somehow.”

Arron got down off the bench, throwing his sewing to the side. “We’ve no choice, anyhow. Wouldn’t want to keep the great Lord Snow waiting.”

Jon Snow lived in an armoury. That was not the strangest thing about him, but then again, certain parts were hard to beat.

When they arrived, they saw that three other recruits were hanging around the entrance– Horse, Leathers, and Jax, the other wildling who wished to take the black. With a wavering glance at them, Satin pushed through the door, feeling at least a little soothed that he probably wasn’t about to be flogged for stealing a bit of oil.

The armoury itself was one big open room, where the armour and weapons were stored. Swords were piled to the sides, axes and maces hung on the walls, shields stacked in neat rows. The bows were kept closer to the yard where they did archery practice, but here and there was a box of arrows. Chests were stuffed with boiled leather and blackened chainmail, with a few sets of plate mail empty on wooden stands, and helmets lining the windowsills. Off to one side was the forge and bellows, cold and unused.

At the far end was a door that led to Lord Snow’s solar. Why anyone would put a solar in an armoury was still baffling to Satin. Most things about Castle Black were baffling, though. Iron Emmett was waiting there, sword on his hip, smiling in that dangerous sort of way he smiled. Smiling… that was good. Probably.

Jon was sat at his desk, his raven nestled on his arm, and Bowen Marsh stood behind him. It was rather small, as far as solars went, just a few shelves holding a few books, a scant few chairs on the other side of the table, and a hearth. There was a door to either side, presumably leading to Jon’s room and his squire’s. Jon nodded as they came in, and Emmett closed the door behind them.

“No use dawdling about it,” said Lord Snow. “Emmett says you six are about as ready as you’ll ever be when it comes to fighting, and the Lord Steward agrees. You four,” he nodded to Arron, Emrick, Horse and Satin, “showed great courage in the recent battles, and you two,” he motioned to Leathers and Jax, “have proven more than capable and experienced enough to take on full duties. It’s past time we let you take your vows.”

Emrick let out a gasp. Satin allowed himself a smile. He’d figured this must have been coming, but it felt thrilling all the same. As if he’d properly accomplished something out of this entire ordeal other than get himself arrested in Gulltown.

Jon continued, “We’ve talked it over and assigned you each to the order that best fits you.” He smiled vaguely. “Horse, to the builders. Leathers, Jax, Emrick, to the rangers. Arron, Satin, to the stewards.” Thank the gods. He’d be happy stitching up cloaks for the rest of his life. Arron didn’t look too pleased, though. “You’ll have the opportunity to swear your vows by the old gods and the new. Those who follow the old, there’s a grove of weirwoods a two hours’ ride from here–”

“The weirwoods?” Bowen Marsh cringed. “My lord, I wouldn’t advise… that’s on the other side of the Wall.”

Jon looked nonplussed. “Yes, that’s how I remember it. Men of the Watch have sworn their vows in that grove for thousands of years. You’re a northman, aren’t you, Lord Marsh? Didn’t you?” Without waiting for a reply he continued. “Horse, Leathers, Jax, I assume that’d be your preference. For the others, you can swear your vows in the sept as early as tomorrow.”

“My lord,” Satin blurted out. He’d never seen a weirwood, not a real growing one, but the idea of swearing in the sept and kneeling below a sneering Cellador was repulsive. “If it’s alright, I’d swear to the weirwoods with the others.” He’d rather speak to the wind than to the seven hungry sides of a god that did not want him. Sweet as they smelled.

Jon regarded him with an unreadable face. The raven was looking at him, too. “If that’s what you wish.”

“Us too,” said Arron suddenly. Emrick shot him a look. “We won’t swear in the sept either.”

Emrick only said, “Aye.”

“Eye,” cried the raven. “Eye, eye.”

Bowen Marsh was reddening. “My lord–”

“If that’s what they wish,” Jon reiterated harshly. “Six to say the words, then. We’ll wait on a clearer day to set out. For now, know that I congratulate you. This is an order that has lasted since the beginning of days, and binds us all, now, no matter where we come from or what name we bear.” He looked very grave and sincere all of a sudden– not quite a lord’s face, though, eyes creased with emotion, mouth caught in a dreaming half-smile. “I should be proud to call you brothers.”

Six to say the words, then. And ten rangers to guard them, and a monstrous wolf, and the Lord Commander on a shaggy grey horse. The day was clear, cloudless, the Wall not weeping but glimmering. Coated in frost and sunlight, the forest was near impossibly beautiful, the ever-early sunset painting the snowdrifts in broad pearly strokes. It was hard to imagine that dangers lurked somewhere past their sight line, though three of their rangers had returned as eyeless heads only days ago. Garth Greyfeather had been one of them. Satin chanced to come across Alf of Runnymudd that night, drinking too much in the cellar hall, eyes red and weepy. He wanted to say something, but figured his words would only come up empty.

Still, though. There was something to the light that made everything pretty.

A short while after they left the Wall, Arron trotted up, talking through his scarf. “I swear Marsh hates me. A steward? Me? Why?”

Satin raised an eyebrow. “You’re skinny. And your father was a master of horse, right? You’re good with the horses. You even helped Tangletongue deliver that foal the other week.”

Arron weighed that. “I’m not that skinny.” He was quiet for a moment. “Well, suppose it can’t be helped. We can’t all be fierce wildling raiders, can we?”

Satin nodded forward at the hoary old wildling, perfectly aware he could hear him. “What kind of a name is Leathers, anyway?”

“Satin. Your name is Satin.” Emrick was chuckling behind them, though.

Arron snorted. “Horse, Leathers, Satin. It’s like a bloody mummers’ show.”

“Or a very odd whorehouse,” said Satin, sing-song.

Leathers was laughing riotously. Jax looked mildly offended, but that might just have been his face.

Jon called for a halt a deal later, Ghost bursting out of the brush with Tom Barleycorn riding at his heels. “Wildlings,” Tom said quietly, nearly too soft for them all to hear. “In the grove.”

Jon frowned. “How many?”

“I counted nine. No guards. Some dead, might be, or sleeping. Most look to be women. One child, but there’s a giant too. Just the one that I saw. They got a fire going, smoke drifting through the trees. Fools.”

Satin saw Jon’s face flicker. A giant. That was something to fear. “We’ll continue on foot,” he said, all calm. He got off his horse. “Rory, Pate, stay with the horses.” He looked to the recruits, who all scrambled to get down on their feet. He gave some orders, but Satin barely heard them. He’d fought wildlings, at the Wall, he’d killed wildlings. But this was different, on the other side. This felt like an invasion.

Darkness had mostly fallen on the forest by then, only a few swathes of indigo light cast over their blacks as they trudged through the snows. It was as Tom said, a fire dwindling in the middle of the grove. Nine massive white trees were rising from the ground in a tight circle, shading it with dark red leaves in the shape of claws. Jon nodded back at them, and they followed silently, barely daring to breathe. Satin kept a hand on his dagger. His fingers tingled in his gloves.

As he got closer and his eyes adjusted he should’ve been looking at the bodies, but instead his eyes were drawn to the faces on the trees. Each a different expression, one screaming, one serene, one weeping hot red tears. The bodies weren’t moving, either, which was perhaps more frightening. Jon stepped to the front out of the undergrowth, and only one responded, an infant in arms letting out a faint wail. The woman holding him gasped and scooted backwards, and the rangers and recruits slipped around the grove, encircling it in an instant. It didn’t take words or blood to cow them. Just stage presence. Satin nearly could’ve laughed if it were not so tense. If Pyp were here he would’ve laughed for certain.

Then the giant woke. At first it seemed as if it were stone, just some great hulking boulder, but at the noise he seemed to grow before their eyes, grabbing a large wooden maul and beginning to grunt angrily. Satin felt his heart begin to thud.

“We want no battle here,” Jon said, still madly calm, though his wolf was growling now. “This is a holy place. Yield, and we–”

It did not matter. He was too small, too quiet, too human. A momentary flash of panic turned him back into a boy again. The giant let out a roar. Satin cursed and slid his dagger from his sheath.

Then from the other side of the grove came words. But were they words? Leathers had stepped forward. Dimly Satin remembered that beyond the Wall they spoke the Old Tongue. It was guttural, lyrical, twisting. And to his shock the giant responded, lower, clunkier. Leathers pointed at the trees, said something else. And the giant lowered his maul and bowed his head.

“It’s done,” Leathers said. “They want no fight.”

The trees just watched, with yawning mouths.

Later, after Jon had spoken with the wildlings and sussed out their stories and they’d separated the dead from the living, they cleared out space for the recruits to take their vows. It seemed silly, then, a frivolous thing to be doing, after saving six lives in a ranging where nobody fought, and agreements were forged with words, not steel. But when they knelt before the trees a powerful silence fell. Satin felt he could smell the snow, the sharp of it, the strange green scent of leaves; he could hear their hoods flapping in the wind, Emrick fidgeting, Arron sucking in a breath. It was full dark now, a pure bitter cold. He could feel the snow melting into his breeches where he was kneeling, the bite of winter, the soft tangle of his hair where it brushed his cheeks.

And he could feel eyes on him. Thousands and thousands of eyes.

“Night gathers,” they began. “And now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.”

It was strange. He’d learned the words, had drilled them so as not to embarrass himself, but he’d never quite thought them through. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with a vow? Think it over? Believe it? Dying at the Wall had never even crossed his mind. He never thought about the future at all. It would only serve to make him miserable.

“I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.” Not a problem. “I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.” He’d get more glory here than anywhere else, though. “I shall live and die at my post.”

The Watch was many things and none of them. Pyp had once called it a prison. Certainly it was. It housed orphans and exiles, runaways and heathens. It was towering and unbreakable, to hear the wildlings tell it, and yet it fell apart under their feet, like a castle all of sand. Or a shadow on a wall. It was a house where you wore no name at all, where the standards were bare, freedom and servitude all rolled together as one.

And it was his death. That was what he swore, wasn’t it?

“I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.”

He chanted it thoughtlessly, light and bare, as if that would somehow let him wriggle free someday if it ever became inconvenient to burn against the cold for a living. And then it was done. Hot breath in the air, that was all. Tongues scraping against teeth. Not gallows or ropes. Just words.

But he looked into the face in the weirwood. It stared back, weeping red tears. And madly, he wanted, with every part of himself, to reach out and wipe them away.

VII.

Satin was reading the play Pyp had given him in his quarters one morning, attempting to keep track of all the Braavosi names, when a knock at his door led him to abandon it. “Yes?”

It was Dolorous Edd, the same as he ever was, though perhaps slightly more stooped. “Hullo.” He glanced out the window, where snow was clumping heavily against the sill. “I’ll not call it a good morning.”

“Seeking me out in my private chambers, alone?” Satin teased. Edd was perhaps the one person at Castle Black who wouldn’t balk when he deigned to be provocative. “Why, Edd, I could almost assume something terribly inappropriate was about to unfold.”

The squire blinked. He was past forty certainly, with slate grey hair, but sometimes it seemed he might have been born that way. There was something impossibly charming about his droopy face. “You’d be wrong to think so,” he moaned. “If only for my creaky legs. And my back, that is. Oh, I’m much too old now, to go about…” He sighed.

Satin barely contained his laugh. “To go about what, Edd?”

“…Dancing.”

He did laugh, then. “Are you here for anything in particular? As pleasant as this is.”

“I’m to leave you,” Edd grumbled from the doorway, eyes downcast. “That’s not the reason. Lord Snow’s sending me to help run a castle of wildling women. It seems clear that it’s due to how I won’t be much a temptation to them, nor them to me, but to hear it from my own lord commander…” He trailed off wistfully.

Satin frowned. Edd was as much a part of Castle Black as the stone foundations were. “I’ll be sorry to see you go, Edd. We all will. But… that’s not the reason?”

“Ah.” Edd tottered closer to him. “Well, Lord Snow’ll need a new steward, is all. To squire for him, clean his bedsheets. Meticulous, that one. Never stains his furs or nothing. Satin, he said, that one’ll do.” He sighed laboriously. “Should’ve known he’d want someone prettier. They always do, in the end, no matter how good you are to them.”

The words didn’t quite make sense. Jon Snow’s steward? Surely not. He’d only just sworn his vows. It was far too early in the morning for this. “Sorry, he said what?”

Edd fidgeted. “Said he wants someone prettier to be dusting his shelves for him, is all. And I was only just getting good at dusting shelves.”

It finally set in. “He wants me to be his steward? For certain?”

“You don’t listen well, do you? Lord Commander’s steward’s s’posed to be groomed for command, they told me. Well, I never did much commanding in my time. And he don’t do so much grooming, to tell it true. But there’s worse jobs.” But Satin had already gotten up, pulling on his boots and grabbing his thickest cloak, mind fuzzy, trembling a little. “He told me to tell you to go to his chambers after supper,” Edd called after him, uselessly, as he ran out the door in a whirl of black.

He had no idea where he was going. He supposed he just needed to go somewhere. Anywhere. Just to puzzle out what was happening. It was freezing cold, though, and the snow was piling down, so his feet turned towards the old Shieldhall, where he might be alone and out of the wind, at least. He was meant to be reporting to Marsh like every morning, but then he supposed he wouldn’t be needing to do that any longer.

None of this made any sense whatsoever. Wasn’t the Lord Commander’s squire meant to be highborn? Groomed for command, Edd had said. No matter the reality of it, Jon had to know what that meant. He was implying… well, he was implying an awful lot of things, wasn’t he? And soon everyone will know. And what will they say? Good job, whore? You deserve this? Most like he’d just get more dirks pointed at him in the dark. Which is saying something.

He couldn’t grasp why it had to be him. He wasn’t an exceptional fighter. He hadn’t committed any acts of particular bravery or merit. Any man could do basic stewards’ work, cleaning and pouring wine and such, and there were dozens of older and more experienced men at the Wall he could’ve chosen from. And yet Jon Snow had picked the boy whore. Edd’s words echoed in his head: He wants someone prettier. Which was a mighty jape.

I should be happy, he realized with a jolt. I should be cheering myself. I should be seeking out my friends and allowing them to congratulate me and drinking myself into a stupor. A year at Castle Black, and he was apparently the personal steward of the Lord Commander. Surely that was good. Worth a point of pride, at least. So why does it fill me with such fear?

Only a few shields still lined the walls of the Shieldhall, colours all dusty and faded. Donal Noye had once told him it used to be filled from floor to ceiling. It was dark and damp, rickety, high wooden beams burnt black with age. He stared at a shield painted black and red, with a flail in the middle. Beside it was a purple one blazoned with a mighty eagle. It wasn’t painted very well. Half the wing was smothered to one side.

“It’s a lark, isn’t it?”

Satin turned swiftly. It was only old Ulmer, standing in the doorway, hulking figure dusted with snow. “What is?”

“Knights.” Ulmer sniffed. “Always wanted to be a knight, as a boy. Everyone in my village, really. Then I met knights. Not much to ‘em, to be honest.” He clicked his tongue. “You?”

“Not really,” Satin said cautiously.

“Then why’re you here?”

An awkward pause. “Why are you here?”

Ulmer sighed. “No archery this morning. Snow, ’n all. And I saw you lingering in here. But back to knights.” Satin groaned inwardly as he launched into a story. “I ever tell you–”

“Yes.”

The archer grinned. “As I was saying, knights, they’re all mad. But it was all I wanted, really, all my life. I dreamed up my own sigil, even. Three arrowheads around an orange, on white. No reason to it, really. S’pose I just like oranges. I always thought, one day I’ll get me a shield with that on. I’ll become a hedge knight, an archer hedge knight, win a tourney and ingratiate myself onto some high lord that I’d impress.” He smiled faintly. “Only black shields up here for us, now. Awful sad. All this free space, and no knights to fill it.” He stepped closer, something like concern in his eyes. “You look… pained.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re sulking.”

The old rogue had no right, but there was a kindness to him. “It’s stupid,” Satin admitted. “Lord Snow wants me as his new steward.”

Ulmer laughed a great big belly laugh. “And you’re sulking!”

“I’m only…” He grasped for a word. “Anxious. I’m anxious.”

The archer’s eyes softened. “The little lord chose you for a reason. No use, is it, to worry, now.”

“You don’t think it’s odd?”

“What?”

“That he chose me.”

Ulmer blinked, then gestured to the empty wall. “There aren’t really any highborn boys left to pick from, are there?” Satin weighed that for a moment. Ulmer turned to leave. “He is a strange lad, that Jon Snow. He’s picked one of them wildlings to be master-at-arms, as well. He likes odd ones, so it seems. Reminds him of himself, mayhaps.”

That wasn’t quite reassuring. He stared at the shields a while longer after Ulmer had left. If he had one, he’d make it purple as well. That would be pretty. Maybe in the middle he’d put an outstretched hand.

His friends did celebrate him at supper that night, though perhaps through jealous eyes. Or uncomprehending ones. Still, though, it was encouraging. No one said anything rude directly to his face, though he got a few stares. He even got butter in his turnips from Hobb. But the night stretched on, and soon he knew he was staying too late. Lord Snow would be expecting him. That was a strange feeling.

Apprehensive, unsure what to expect, he excused himself and set off to the armoury. It was odd, all in the dark. The great white wolf was curled up in a corner, sleeping. He knocked on the door to the solar and entered, stepping carefully. Be cautious and courteous. Learn to read a face. Learn to read a room.

Jon Snow gave him a curt nod, pushing aside a stack of papers. The raven cawed from the rafters. “Evening.”

“Good evening, my lord,” Satin said as he sat.

His eyes narrowed slightly– calculating, more than angry. “I assume Edd let you know about your new role. You should be very proud of yourself.” Then he cringed. “No, that sounded… condescending.”

Satin bit his lip. “It’s alright. I’m very honoured.”

“Your duties won’t start ’til tomorrow, but I wished to check in with you briefly anyway. I’ve realized,” said Jon, “that I hardly know anything about you. It seems…” He searched for words. “Perhaps prudent, to ask.” Another awkward pause. “Just simple questions. It shouldn’t take long.”

If you hardly know me, why’d you want me as your squire? “Of course, my lord.” This was passing strange. He’d assumed he’d just get ordered around. Not… whatever this was.

“My lord?” Jon echoed faintly. “Not m’lord? Not many call me that. Not those who are…” Lowborn, was the unspoken word, because of course it was. “Even Edd says m’lord, though he’s from some house in the Vale.”

Satin blanched. Act only a little above your station. He couldn’t tell him the reason he so often used the formal honours had begun as an attempt not to remind the lords he served in Oldtown that he was as common as he was. Better to help them pretend they were fucking their highborn brothers-in-arms, or more probably their squires. Safer that way. It was a bad habit more than anything. “We’re all brothers at the Wall, is what I was told,” he lied smoothly. Though it wasn’t technically a lie. “No highborn, no low.” A pause. “My lord.”

Jon nodded. “My apologies, I…” Apologies? Satin could’ve laughed. “You’re right, of course. It’s only…” He trailed off again.

“My lord?”

“It’s nothing, Satin.” Another pause, then he looked up. They locked eyes. “You remind me of myself, you know.”

That sent a stab of panic– actual panic– into his gut. “Oh?”

But Jon had already moved on, seemingly unaware that he’d said something so profoundly meaningful and so utterly ridiculous. “What’s that scent?”

What’s he on about? Then Satin remembered it was probably just the perfume in his stubble. “Gingergrass, my lord.” Among other things.

“Gingergrass?” Jon asked, baffled. “Where’d you get gingergrass?”

He played coy. “Oh... somewhere along the way.”

Jon seemed to begrudgingly accept that. “Why do you wear that, anyway?” He looked genuinely curious. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be trying to impress anyone.”

Satin smiled with his teeth. “Who says I’m not?” He cocked his head to the side, revealing nothing. “If you must know it reminds me of home.”

“Oldtown, then. But you were recruited in Gulltown, I’ve heard?”

Satin tensed. “It’s… well, it’s a long story, my lord.”

“I’ve time.”

I thought you’d say that. He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to lie about this, not to Jon Snow. “My mother was… like me. But she left when I was small. The brothel, I mean. Took ship to Gulltown. The other women weren’t sure if it was for… a man, or something. They couldn’t stop her. She just vanished.”

“Did you know your father?”

Wouldn’t you like to know? “Definitely not, my lord. No one did. She had lots of–” Regulars. “Suitors. Highborn, mostly, but not all. As it was for the rest of us.”

Jon’s eyes were very sad. He’d never been so close to them before. They weren’t truly black, just a very dark grey. “So you’re a bastard too, then.”

That caught him off guard. “Well, I suppose. I– I’d never thought about it. Most of us who aren’t highborn are in a certain sense bastards, my lord. Only we don’t get the names for it unless we’re claimed by some high lord. Which… we never are.” What would that make me? Satin Flowers? That would be ridiculous.

“Sorry,” said Jon, bafflingly. “Go on with the story.”

Satin screwed up his mouth. “So I grew up in the brothel. The women there raised me, and then I worked there. Not much to tell about that. I saved up enough coin over the years and managed, one day, to get myself on a ship to Gulltown. Looking for her. It was stupid, I just…”

Gods, but Jon had kind eyes. “Did you find her?”

He looked down at his boots. “Of course not. Then I ran out of money. I had to turn to my usual trade to try and get home, but…” A wry smile, remembering. The bloom of bruises, like flowers. “Would you believe you can be arrested for indecency with all your clothes still on?”

Jon frowned. “Oh.” And then: “That must have been awful. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Satin let out a loud laugh. At Jon’s confused expression, he said, “No one’s ever said that to me before.”

That shocked Lord Snow to a stretch of silence.

Satin shifted uncomfortably in his chair, then cleared his throat. Betray no thoughts but ones that might please. “I only just realized I should be thanking you for the position, my lord.”

“Oh. Right.” Jon looked lost in thought. “Courteous of you.”

“It’s an honour, isn’t it?”

He smiled a bit. “Well, you’re taking it much better than I did. I was offended, if you can believe that.” He put on a high southron accent. ““Do you take me for a servant?” Gods, I fancied myself the king of the training yard. Hardly realized I was only being assigned to the stewards to be trained for command.”

Satin nearly choked to hear him say it. “Command,” he said, hoarsely. “Right.”

“Do you take umbrage?”

“Well,” said Satin. “It’s only that it seems…” He grasped for the right word. “Odd. To choose me.” He likes odd ones.

Jon furrowed his brow. “It’s not as if you’re unqualified. Marsh says you can read and write. I’ve no idea why he said it with such derision, almost no one here’s literate.”

“I help with the counts,” he admitted. “But I’m a terrible speller.”

“Forgive me for asking, but how do you learn to write in a brothel?”

“We have accounts like any trade,” he replied, trying very hard not to be irked. “There’s plenty downtime.” He decided to just ask. What could he do, demote me? “Have you not been to a brothel before, my lord?”

Jon blinked. “Er.”

That’s something to ask about later. “No matter. I only meant... I’m no castle seneschal when it comes to my letters.”

“Well, you’re leagues ahead of most.” Jon pressed on. “You’ve become a fair fighter. You’re a skilled shot with a crossbow, and when I last saw you train you were beating Arron into the ground.”

“Arron’s too hasty,” Satin blurted out. “He tries to dodge everything. It’s a simple matter of standing your ground.” Then he thought, He’s seen me train? But his surprise was foolish, surely. He was Lord Commander. He watched everyone train.

“And you’re observant,” Jon concluded. He leaned back in his chair. “You’re also quick-witted, pleasant, and learn faster than most. What exactly am I missing here that should preclude you?”

Everything, he could have screamed. Every principle of social order. “But I’m…”

“You’re what?” His eyes glinted, dark and smiling, like chips of flint. “A whore? A catamite?” He said the words delicately. “And? I’m a bastard, wildling, and turncloak. So they say. And yet here I sit.”

“But the men,” Satin said. “They’ll not like it, will they?”

Jon shrugged. “The higher officers have already told me they don’t approve of my appointments. To put it plainly, I told them to shove it.”

That was almost… sweet. Vaguely frightening, but sweet. “Command, though,” he pressed. “You said you were training me for command.” And who’d follow a whore’s orders? was left unspoken.

Jon smiled faintly. “Satin, I’m seventeen. There’s plenty time to learn. I’ll not die on you yet.”

“Yet,” cried the raven from the rafters. “Yet, yet.”

Jon threw a kernel of corn at it.

VIII.

He thought, as Jon Snow’s steward, his days would start to feel more… heroic, perhaps. The personal steward of the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, that was a position of honour. He’d be given tasks of a certain merit, have some input into the goings-on of the castle, perhaps have Jon coach him in manners of command in some meaningful way over cups of mead one night.

Instead he spent an inordinate amount of time scouring Ghost’s white fur off Jon’s blacks with a horsehair brush. In that first week, after moving his meagre chest of possessions into one of the two little cells behind the solar, he mostly followed Jon around like– well, like a direwolf. He fetched food from Hobb, mulled wine from Clydas, messages from essentially everyone at Castle Black. Sometimes he was sent to check on the giant in the yard, or the wildling babe in the King’s Tower. If Jon was off in a meeting or doing his rounds he sent his sheets and blacks off to be cleaned, or cleaned them himself, or tidied the solar, or tidied the solar again. He didn’t mind. He liked the work. And he liked being around Jon, who was altogether too kind to him in some ways, never making any sharp demands or raising his voice. He was leagues better than Marsh had been, anyway. Though his eyes were generally faraway, and he never had much time for idle chatter.

What he learned as Jon’s steward was this: never had a man been so consumed by contradiction. In one moment he was a stern-faced lord, the next an awkward boy. In a certain light, he could fit amongst the fiercest wildling raiders; in another he could almost be a raven-haired knight from the songs. In most lights he was simply a sad-faced seventeen-year-old. He spoke eloquently, then gruffly, then stumbled over simple questions. He was gracious but never quite warm, formal but never quite cold-hearted.

To his men he seemed a callous lordling, barking orders in service of a doomed and unreachable cause. But Satin often heard him pacing, muttering to himself through the walls, running through accounts, trying everything to simplify his arguments. He talked to his raven often, and sometimes he’d stroke his direwolf in silence for minutes on end with grave eyes, contemplating. Every horse Satin brought him eased under his touch. It was as if they all spoke the same language, and Satin was the strange one for not joining the conversation.

Pyp had thought Jon a humourless abandoner; Grenn had thought him unfortunately hard-hearted. In truth he was neither. And occasionally both. He was miserable. And serious– gods, he was serious. Every smile was sad, every laugh bitter. And why not? What was joyous about being Lord Commander? He ate in his solar and slept in his small cell and worked all day and thought all night, and that was all. Endless meetings and misery, fighting for a cause nobody saw clearly, probably not even him. It seemed such a sad and lonely life. Needlessly, in certain ways. He was only a boy, wasn’t he?

But he was a wolf, too. He was a wolf. And yet, at points– a laugh not so low. A glimmer of hope in the eyes; the smallest boyish smile. Something of the breeze in him. Something of the lamb.

Satin ate in his chambers most of the time now, if he could wheedle away an extra platter of food from Hobb when fetching Jon’s supper– and even if he couldn’t, Jon never finished his plate. He’d been too busy to talk to his friends as often as he’d like. But one night, at the end of that first week, he excused himself and made his way to the cellar hall, where he found Arron sitting alone, the others having just left. It was pleasant to catch up with him, even in an empty hall.

“Has anybody said anything?” Satin asked him once they were past idle talk, stirring his stew listlessly in an attempt to be casual. “About… you know. Me. My position.”

Arron cringed. “Well.”

“What.”

“It’s just…”

“What.”

“What do you expect, Satin?” He poked at his food. “It’s all very predictable. I don’t know if it’s necessary for me to say, really.” Satin just shot him a look. “Fine, fine. I’ve heard… grumbling. The usual, you’re a whore, you’re a catamite, you’re green, on and on it goes. Worse with anyone zealous, but isn’t it always? I think Cellador must be riling them up in his sermons or something. They think it’s not fair, not right, that it’s… well, odd.”

“It is odd.”

Arron looked up at him. “You seduced him into it,” he said flatly. “They’re all saying that, at least the stewards. As soon as word spread, that’s what most everyone concluded.”

Satin blinked. “I… seduced him?” He’d have more luck seducing Wun Wun.

“They think your service involves a deal more than just squiring.” Arron frowned. “It doesn’t, does it?”

“No! Mother have mercy, Arron, do you really think so little of me?”

“Also, apparently you’re a sorcerer,” he continued. “You bewitched your way into his breeches. Like Mysaria the White Worm.”

Satin groaned. “Or Tyanna of the Tower. No, I get the picture, Arron.”

Arron leaned in over the table, lowering his voice. “Would you, though? I mean, if he asked?”

He fell silent, heat rushing into his cheeks. What a preposterous thing to say. Jon was too… faraway, distant, always perched on a pedestal out of reach. He’d never even given thought to it. “I don't suppose so.” He has kind eyes, though. “Why, would you?”

Arron snorted. “He’s got a horse face. And have you seen those eyebrows? Besides, I’ve got a bet going that he’s fucking that wildling princess.”

“Val?” That didn’t seem a correct assumption to Satin, but he supposed perhaps he wouldn’t know.

“The very same.” He shrugged. “He had that wildling wife before, didn’t he?” The dead girl. With hair like fled blood. “And really, who wouldn’t fuck Val, if they were Lord Commander?”

Satin glared at him for one long moment, and then they fell into peals of laughter.

The next night, Satin was sweeping out the armoury, and Jon was sat on a barrel sharpening a dagger. Only he kept looking up every so often, staring at him with his piercing gaze. He cut a striking figure against the wall, skinny without his cloak on, one leg tucked under him. Ghost was padding around in the back, nudging his nose into the boxes of arrows.

Eventually Satin held the broom still and looked back, expectant. “My lord? Do you… have need of something?”

“Satin.” Like he was tasting the word. “Where’s that name from, anyway?”

Oh, we’re doing questions again? “Where’s the name Jon from?” he retorted, politely.

Jon smiled, leaning back on the barrel. “I’ve no idea.”

“Satin,” he started, waveringly, then trailed off. Satin was, in actuality, the bed where his mother had birthed him. He’d come too fast for her to get out of the brothel, so she’d been tended by a score of red-cheeked women in various states of undress. She named him for the shiny pink fabric he’d clung to when he came into this world, said it was because one day maybe he’d be proper, he’d be lordly and rich. Or so the other whores had claimed. He never quite knew her, but he remembered her face, dark eyes and dark hair and full lips. She’d been so young when she’d birthed him, and so young when she’d left him. Younger than Satin was now. “…Doesn’t come from anywhere. Just the fabric, I suppose. Whores,” he explained with a shrug. “They’ve strange ways.”

They were both quiet for another moment. Satin went back to sweeping, but there really wasn’t much left to do. “My lord,” he started, then cursed himself, then continued. I’m his steward. Surely I can ask him things too. “I have a personal question.”

“What is it?”

The phrasing would be tricky. “The other week. You said you’d never been to a brothel before. I only thought… it was strange. At least, to someone such as me. For someone such as you.”

Jon’s face was unreadable. “That isn’t much a question.”

“Why haven’t you, then?”

He considered it a moment. “I was only fourteen when I joined the Watch.”

“And?” Satin raised an eyebrow. “You decided to swear a vow of celibacy at fourteen? Who’d do such a thing?”

Jon laughed, somewhat uncomfortably, creasing the scar across his eye. “Fair counter. I suppose I do owe you the truth of it.” Was he blushing? “It wasn’t that I’d never considered it. That I wasn’t…” He trailed off, frowning. “At a certain point it became clear to me that my mother could have been…” He seemed unwilling to say it. “It frightened me. That I could come face to face with her, and never know it. Especially there.”

Then he fell silent. Satin felt blood rush to his head, almost unwittingly. “Well,” he said finally, voice hot with incredulity, “my mother actually was a whore, you know. We don’t all consider it a stain on our honour.” There was a terrible pause. I shouldn’t have said that. “My lord.”

Jon blinked, putting down his dagger. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Kind of you.”

“That was wrong of me,” he managed. “I apologize. It… it was how I felt at the time. Stupidly, as you said.” He sighed, eyes darkening. “Growing up in Winterfell, with my brothers and sisters, I’d do anything to convince myself I was worth the same as them. That I could be honourable and strong and lordly, and I could… convince them, maybe. That I could be a Stark. That… it would be better, to be a Stark. But that was foolish and I knew it.” He hopped off the barrel, sheathing his dagger. “So here we are.”

Satin stared at him, heart softening slightly. “I’m sorry, my lord. I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly.”

Jon furrowed his brow. “You shouldn’t be apologizing. I’m grateful that you seek to keep me in check. Someone has to. It’s no good to close yourself off from learning.”

You’re only seventeen. Who’s telling you that you should close yourself off from anything? They stood there for a moment, still in the yawning armoury. Jon turned to go. Satin took in a deep breath. “You know, if your father had never claimed you,” he said, quietly, “perhaps we would’ve lived the same life. And if my father had come and brought me to his big stone castle–” His voice faltered. “Then I would’ve lived yours.”

That stopped Jon in his tracks. He looked back with the faintest smile. “Perhaps you would have. Sleep well, Satin.”

When he was gone, Ghost bounded over to Satin and whined with sweet sad eyes the colour of raspberries, nuzzling into his chest. He rubbed the fur around his neck idly til the wolf was sated, and wondered. Apparently you’re a sorcerer. Arron’s words echoed in his mind. But more and more these days he felt Jon was the one bewitching him.

As he tossed and turned in his chambers that night, he found that he couldn’t get the conversation out of his head. They were not the same, not in any conceivable way– Jon was so strong, so sharp, and Satin felt half a boy beside him, always stumbling over his words. But maybe, in some other life, in some other world… He ran through the story in his head, over and over. If, if, if… If his mother had kept better records, if his father had chanced back on the brothel one day, had seen his face in Satin’s features. If he’d been taken back to some castle keep made of tall grey stone, given rich meals and a sigil to reverse. Maybe a hand, outstretched on purple.

Satin Flowers, he’d be, then. Satin Sand, or even Satin Snow. Training at swords in some yard every day, no longer feeling the need to keep himself slender and lithe, cutting his hair at the shoulders. Learning letters and histories, tactics and hunting and politics, and one day getting married off to some… to some…

But every time he tried to imagine his father he only saw a man without a face. A strong hand lingering in a doorway. A shadow in the sun. It was fruitless, foolish, a thought without any kernel of truth to it, and he tried to chase it from his mind as he fell into a restless, troubled sleep. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t.

In his dreams he saw Jon, hair curling slightly in the wet yellow southron heat, on his back in torn silks for some man, mouth falling open in a half-faked smile.

IX.

The next day Queen Selyse arrived from Eastwatch with all her retinue, parading around the yard with all the grace of an easily-startled goose. That morning Satin had worked himself up over whether he should bow to her or not when they were to welcome her, until Jon reassured him it wouldn’t quite be necessary. In the end Satin did choose to bow his head– but only to the little girl.

After the queen’s men had been shepherded away, Jon took the Braavosi banker Tycho Nestoris to his solar for a meeting, sending Satin hurrying away for wine. After he fetched it he managed to overhear some of their discussion (pressing himself against the door to do so), but most of it was dreadfully boring, fiddling over numbers for a loan. He did catch some gossip, though, that King Tommen was refusing to pay his debts, that the Iron Bank was willing to lend help to King Stannis, that there were rumours of dragons in Essos– all of which was only mildly interesting to anyone who lived at the Wall. Still, it was good to be informed.

Afterwards, when it was full dark, snow falling gently, Jon sent him to fetch food so he and Tycho could break bread in the cellar hall. But when Satin tore down the steps with platter in hand not a quarter hour later, Jon had already left. That was odd. He gave one of the plates to the banker with a shrug and took the other for himself, settling at one of the trestle tables. The hall was bustling with queen’s men and black brothers alike, all trading stories, some of the men cornering the scattering of ladies Selyse had brought with her, all haughty angles in uncomfortable dresses.

A hand slammed down on his table, making him jump. “Who’ve we got here? I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” He looked up to see a squat man, hairy and broad, studying Satin with a sneer. Axell Florent, he remembered from that morning, the queen’s self-styled Hand. And not a very nice man, so it seemed.

Satin stared at him blankly. “My lord–”

Another of the knights, a drunk-looking man dressed in red, swaggered over. “He’s almost a girl, look at him. He was standing right by little Lord Snow– what are you, then, his–?”

“His steward,” Satin interrupted. “Ser.” Perhaps he was a whore, but he certainly wasn’t about to let himself be called Jon’s. Courtesy, where there isn't any armour, he reminded himself bitterly.

Axell snorted and moved away with boredom in his eyes, joining another conversation. The knight raised his eyebrows and grinned. There was something dangerous in his gaze. “That’s what we’re calling it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Satin kept his voice icy. Let them imagine what they’d like. Never laugh at a nobleman. A doll does not bite back.

“Don’t you?”

“Shove off, Malegorn,” came a sharp voice from across the table Satin was sat at. He turned to see that it was a serving girl in roughspun, with dirty blonde hair and a fiery stare, about sixteen or so, thick about the waist. Ser Malegorn laughed at her until he realized everyone else had already turned back to their own conversations, so he skulked to the other side of the hall, ingratiating himself with some of the older rangers.

Satin moved his plate a bit closer to the girl so he was sitting more directly across from her. She was seated beside another serving woman, a few years older, with her dark brown hair in a complicated braid. “My thanks.”

“He’s a proper git, isn’t he?” the girl said. “I’m Joanna. That there’s Sansara, but she don’t talk much.”

“Satin.” He paused. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” She leaned in closer over the table. “But you are Lord Snow’s steward, then? What’s that like?”

Satin smiled at her excitement. “It’s only been for a week or so. I’m afraid it isn’t terribly interesting. But I’ve certainly served worse.”

“Oh, haven’t we all?” Joanna sighed airily. He was about to make a jape, but she launched right back into talking without pause. “Is it true he was a wildling once? How’s that, if he’s a Stark? There’s rumours he turns into a great big direwolf at night, but I think that’s silly. You can’t turn into a wolf. He’s quite young for a Lord Commander, isn’t he? So skinny under all those furs. It was funny to see him order around all those older men, though. And that giant! Thought I’d piss myself to look at him. Matrice told me Jon Snow’s got this savage princess locked up in a cage. Or a tower. Everyone wants to marry her, but I don’t see what that would do for them, ‘specially the landless ones. They haven’t even seen her yet, is she pretty? Are the wildlings really nasty? I said they weren’t, not necessarily, but everyone told me I was being stupid. Especially Matrice. Which is so unfair, Matrice is a hag, and anyway I’m not stupid at all–”

Sansara coughed. “Joanna. Leave the poor man be.”

“No, it’s alright,” Satin said with a grin. “Jon’s no wildling, but he lived among them for months beyond the Wall, on orders. Spying, so he could warn us of their plans. Probably a grand story, but he never tells it.” He remembered that redheaded spearwife, sighing and dying in his arms. “He doesn’t turn into a direwolf, but he has a pet one, which might be scarier. And he doesn’t have the wildling princess in a cage.” Though he wasn’t supposed to say that she was beyond the Wall even now, treating with Tormund Giantsbane. “…She’s not even a princess, really. Val. She’s just the sister of the wife of Mance Rayder. You’re right to say they shouldn’t want her as their bride, she’s got no lands or titles.” He considered it a moment. “But she is pretty, so there’s that.”

“And the wildlings, then?” she asked, bug-eyed. “You fought them, didn’t you? But you’re not so strong, and you came out of it fine. Are they really so scary as everyone says?”

Satin bit his lip. A face swam in his mind. A pimply boy, of fourteen or so. “Of course not. You’re right about that too. They’re… well.. they’re men, like any of us. Some awful, some kind. We’ve got some wildlings joining the Watch now, too. One’s our master-at-arms, even. They’re fierce, I suppose. It’s a harsh way of life. But no crueler than the rest of us as a whole, I’d say.” That’s what Jon would’ve said. Something like that. Satin possibly even believed it.

Joanna smiled toothily. “I knew it. Cedra said they drank blood. But she’s always lying.”

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Sansara said quietly, looking down at her food. “That you had to fight them at all. Now that you’ve let them in. Some of the men at Eastwatch said they were fleeing something. Some horror.”

Satin’s throat dried up. “It’s not something I know much about,” he admitted. But he could hardly deny it, could he? After the stories of everyone who’d seen the wights rise at Castle Black before he’d even arrived, of the scattered tales of the battle at the Fist of the First Men from the scant few who’d survived it… He didn’t like to think about it. “The dead are rising beyond the Wall,” he finally said, haltingly. “That’s what they say. As winter comes.”

Joanna nudged Sansara. “This one knows that full well. She dreams it all the time.”

The woman shifted uncomfortably. “Not all the time.”

That was a surprise. “Oh?” Though it seemed at times that most everyone at Castle Black had strange dreams at some point or another. He remembered Matthar telling him once of one he’d had about a house with a red door burning to the ground, with a little girl trapped inside. The red door had been important for some reason. Dragonfire, he’d said, it’s always dragonfire. And sometimes he heard Jon crying out in the middle of the night through the wall. Even he occasionally woke shivering from some smoking nightmare, but then he mostly forgot what transpired while he slept. It wasn’t good to dwell on such things.

Sansara’s face had fallen. “It’s not always the dead walking, in the dreams. But up here, I get them more and more. Mostly it’s like… images I don’t understand, shadows and things. When I told Her Grace about it she said it was like a gift, from the Lord of Light, and that I should talk to the red woman once I got here. But it doesn’t feel like much a gift, and Melisandre frightens me. Princess Shireen has odd nightmares as well, or so she told me once. Poor girl, she’s always looking for someone to talk to. The dragon dreams, she called them.”

Dragon dreams. Dragonfire, it’s always dragonfire. Tycho Nestoris had mentioned dragons, too, hadn’t he? Satin swallowed a sip of mulled wine, his head clouding. “Unfortunate that the dragons are all dead. Pity. We could always use more heat up here.”

They laughed. But there wasn’t much joy in it.

The three of them talked long into the night, the serving girls providing gossip about the queen’s men, and he providing the same about the Watch. Sansara was sweet and serious, Joanna funny. They’d had a rough go of it these past months, being made to follow their ladies all the way to a frozen wasteland, but they seemed to have taken to it with an admirable gusto. It was cheering.

When he crept into the rooms behind the armoury, he saw Jon fast asleep at his desk, his scarred cheek rubbing into the hardwood, hair still scraped tightly behind his head. He barely held back from laughing, and crept into the solar as quiet as he could. Perhaps he should’ve woken him, gotten him into bed, but he didn’t want to disturb his rest, uncomfortable as it likely was. He wondered what Jon might be dreaming about. Dragons, or whatnot.

On soft feet he circled the desk. He wouldn’t wake him, but… With a careful hand he tugged Jon’s hair loose from its tie, letting it fall loose onto his shoulders, so it wasn’t so tight on his forehead. Jon didn’t even shift in his seat.

He’s in sore need of a haircut, he thought, faintly, in the back of his mind. And then, I would cut his hair for him if he asked. Mayhaps when he wakes up, I’ll mention it. I should sew him a new cloak, too. I’d line the hood with those scraps of velvet we’ve got tucked away with the wool stores. He’s Lord Commander, he should at least look the part. I would wash his back, if he liked. He should have someone putting ointment on those scars. He felt almost in a daze, his stomach roiling. The wine, he thought. It’s the wine. Suddenly it was all he could do to stop staring at Jon and instead look very hard at his boots. It wasn’t appropriate. It was all he wanted in the world.

He shoved into his room and shut the door tight behind him, trying to blink back the misery settling like cold rot in his gut. Not now. It’s not right. It isn’t fair. But in that moment what he wanted more than anything was to sit and talk with Jon Snow until summer came again. To see what lay beneath his lord’s face, to touch him, his hands. Or… or, not to touch him. To just look. And then only for a little while.

He wanted… What did he want, truly? He would be happy just to follow Jon anywhere, to fight beside him, to watch him, to wait for him in his solar by night and strip him of his armour, piece by piece. Though perhaps he had always felt like this. Perhaps he'd known ever since Jon had taken him by the shoulders in the battle with the Thenns and shaken him awake– as if his life before then had only been one long gold-tinted dream, and this was his true life, here where the Wall washed his memories clean with its cold breath, here where he would die one day. Perhaps this was his purpose.

Or it wasn’t. Or this is foolish, and will get me nowhere, will only make it all worse. But it was what he felt.

He didn’t dream of dragons. He dreamt an old dream, of three ships by a shimmering sea, a dark-haired woman, a quiet word. A hand hovering in a doorway. A shadow through the silks.

X.

The next day he was awoken by loud knocking at the door to his room.

“Satin? I need you to help me plan a wedding.”

Mother have mercy, what now?

He was still bleary from the night before, but the awful feeling in his stomach had mostly settled. When he opened the door after pulling on his breeches and a half-buttoned doublet, he saw Jon, looking even blearier, face betraying the tiniest hint of panic. He yawned despite himself, doing up his shirt. “It’s only just past dawn, my lord. What do you mean, a wedding?”

“Ty and Dannel found a highborn girl on the kingsroad seeking sanctuary. Alys Karstark, I’ve met her before. She’s with Clydas for the moment.”

They stepped out into the solar, Satin taking his cloak from its peg. “What’s she doing up here?”

“Fleeing her uncle. He wants to force a marriage upon her.”

“To him?”

“Aye.”

His mind grew clearer as he blinked away the fog of sleep. He figured it out then. “So, you want to arrange a different marriage, then. To someone else. Before he can catch her.”

Jon smiled. “Exactly.”

“To whom?”

“Not sure yet.” Jon was pacing. “I thought… perhaps some wildling leader. It could be overstepping, some of the men might not like it, but…”

“…It could serve to welcome them more properly into the realm.” He knew that. Marriages were often more important than wars when it came to making any significant change. “Who, though? Are any of them worthy of a highborn lady? I suppose that new Magnar of Thenn is half a lord already.”

Jon looked at him and smiled. “I had the same thought. If we’re giving Sigorn a castle, he should have a wife as well. He’ll be happy. She’s pretty. And she seems willing to do anything to get out of this.”

“But... we aren’t giving Sigorn a castle.”

“Still, we can let him think it.” His smirk was minuscule, but Satin saw it all the same. Stop that. Stop being endearing.

He splashed some water into his face from the basin to the side. “And you said I’m to help plan it? When are we going to hold it?”

“Two weeks from now, I hope,” Jon said as he wrenched open the door to the armoury.

Two weeks? That’s all? “I’m not paid enough for this, my lord,” he grumbled with a half-smile, pulling on his boots.

“You’re not paid at all.”

Was that a jape? “Why, Lord Snow, there’s still time yet to correct that,” he teased.

An exaggerated sigh from the doorway. “Unfortunate that the Watch hardly has the coin to feed ourselves.”

Satin grinned. “You’re saying you couldn’t afford me.”

“Implications.” A shrug. “They’re tricky.”

Jon, who claimed to be handling the negotiations, had given him leave to give orders to the stewards, even to Marsh, which would be hilarious if he had the courage to confront the Lord Steward about anything. He’d have to delegate tasks individually, but he figured it wouldn’t be much of a problem.

It seemed pertinent to have it done in the style of the old gods, but there was no heart tree at Castle Black to stand witness. As they were both northerners, it wouldn’t do to expect either Lady Alys or Sigorn to swear their vows in a sept, and the marriage was technically being done under King Stannis’ jurisdiction, which meant it was being done under Melisandre’s jurisdiction, and neither of them wanted to displease the red woman, so Jon threw up his hands and decided a wedding done in the light of R’hllor would have to do.

He met Alys Karstark the next evening in her new chambers in the King’s Tower, to ask her input on some of the other aspects of the wedding. It was, after all, her wedding, so it only seemed fair. Jon was busy imprisoning her uncle. She was kind and gracious, and was taking to the idea of marrying a wildling lord with surprising enthusiasm. He got her to draw out the Karstark sunburst on a piece of parchment for her maiden’s cloak, which he’d have to get made. He supposed he’d also have to think up a proper sigil for the Thenns.

The dress could prove a problem. Lady Alys had arrived all in dark wool and furs, carrying no other clothes. He doubted any of the stewards had ever sewn a dress before, let alone one fit for a wedding. She would want to look pretty, and he didn’t want to begrudge her that. But where was he to get any jewelry? A veil? They both knew the wedding would necessarily be a humble affair, but getting married unadorned in a black dress seemed such a waste. Once their discussions ended, he excused himself politely and made his way down the hall towards the steps. Too late, he realized he never got her measurements.

She’s about the same size as me, though, he thought, head down. Tall and skinny. And I can always make adjustments later. Then he almost bowled someone over in his haste.

It was Joanna, carrying a basket of newly-washed clothes on her hip. Some tipped out onto the floor. “Hey!”

He flushed. “Sorry.” He knelt to pick up one of the fallen garments. It was a green dress in the style of the south, skirt loose and flowing. Simple, probably a handmaiden’s garb, but a flattering cut nonetheless. “Joanna, do you think anyone would mind if I… borrowed this?”

She raised an eyebrow. “…For what?”

He huffed. “Not to wear.” He explained the situation with Alys as quick as he could. Joanna frowned, but nodded at the dress.

“Take it,” she said brightly. “It’s Sansara’s. She’d want you to. For the bride.”

“You’re a gift.” Satin folded it carefully, bundling it beneath his arm. “You don’t happen to have any Myrish lace tucked away in there, do you?”

“Not a chance.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Highborn ladies. You know how they get.”

“Understood.”

She put the basket back on her hip. “I looked for that wildling master-at-arms you mentioned, you know.”

“He didn’t drink your blood, did he?”

“No,” Joanna laughed. “He was nice. He taught me words of the Old Tongue so I could speak to the giant. I said hello to a giant! Can you imagine? If I didn’t know better, I’d almost want to chop off my hair and dress all in black if I could, and stay here forever. Just to hear the giant’s stories. Leathers sang an awful sad song to me. About giants.”

Satin felt a pang in his chest. “I think if you joined the Watch, it’d be a much sadder song.”

“Yes, I suppose so. And I don’t think anything I did would be enough to hide these tits,” she said glumly. Her face twisted into a frown. “I should go. I was supposed to be done with this ages ago. Good luck with the dress, and all that.”

He bowed his head, turning to go. “My lady.”

She got the jape. She gave a low, mocking curtsey, eyes sparkling. “My lord.”

The rest of the time until the wedding passed by in a blur. He got some of the more delicate stewards to make a dress for Lady Alys modelled off Sansara’s, and it turned out shockingly well, of their softest make of undyed wool with pale doe leather around the waist and collar, loose and flowing in a way that would fit her height. He returned Sansara’s dress, tucking the pouch of silver he got from Pyp in the sleeve for her trouble. A septon’s get from Ashford turned out to be a deft hand at drawing, and fashioned an ingenious sigil for the Magnar– a bronze disk of Thenn armour surrounded by the Red God’s flames, vaguely in the shape of a Karstark sunburst. That went on the bride’s cloak, and they repurposed one of their own dark fur cloaks for the maiden’s. Satin felt oddly proud of himself, strutting about the castle and ordering men around, as they all came together for a single cause. A good cause. He could see why Jon did it.

He tried not to think about Jon.

In whatever spare time he could find, he finally finished reading Pyp’s Braavosi play, but it only served to worry his stomach more. In it, a madwoman named Rohanne had both her suitors killed after finding out they lied to her, each pretending to be one another under the guise of one combined man, one an ugly poet and the other a beautiful fool. Afterwards she threw herself into the sea in her heartbreak. The monologue of her fat steward afterward said she’d done it for love. What did anyone do anything for, if not for that?

But that wasn’t love at all. Not really. Sacrifice wasn’t always love, was it? This was purely misery, pride, a failure of the mind. It was needless, too, which in Satin’s mind made it not really sacrifice anymore. She killed and died for the sake of an imagined man. She could’ve been grateful. Could’ve loved them both for who they were beneath their porcelain masks. The man she thought they were, he still existed, just split in two. She just couldn’t see it, and it killed her.

It seemed a silly thing to write a story about. He wasn't sure why Pyp liked it so. Love wasn’t supposed to kill you, in stories. It was meant to save you. Peering beneath your lover’s mask, finding the truth beneath the veneer– that was supposed to be an act of the highest devotion. No matter the ugliness that might lie beneath. That… that was love. Or so it seemed to him.

He tried not to think about love, either.

One of the women at his brothel who’d helped raise him was from Lys. She worshipped a love god named Yndros that was both male and female at once, and she was the most beautiful woman in all of Oldtown, or so Satin thought when he was seven. Once, he’d asked her how you were supposed to pray to Yndros, and she smiled serenely and said in a fading accent, “You don’t, sweetling. You just have to allow yourself to love and be loved. That’s what prayer is.” She dabbed at his nose with a cloth. “When we love, boy, that’s the gods speaking back to us. In their sweet tongues.”

She was killed in an alley a year later.

The night before the wedding, Satin found himself oddly frantic. He was free to retire whenever he wanted, but he couldn’t, he was too nervous, so he busied his hands dusting the shelves in the solar while Jon was drafting letters at the desk.

His hand brushed an old book. The Jade Compendium. There was a folded sheaf of parchment sticking out about halfway through, as if someone had been reading it recently. He cracked it open idly, eyes scanning uncomprehendingly over the page. “My lord, what is this?”

“What?” Satin waved the book at him, and Jon frowned. “Ah. It’s a collection of Essosi myths. Maester Aemon gifted it to me before he left.”

“But what’s in this page?”

Jon looked askance. “Some tale. A fool who killed his wife for a sword.”

“Oh.” Satin put the book back on the shelf. “Just some light reading, then.”

He paused. “Aemon thought perhaps Stannis had been… almost draping himself in the myth. Azor Ahai, that was the name. Some talk about his birth, bleeding stars and salt and dragons. With a glowing sword forged in blood. Lightbringer. Aemon thought perhaps that was why the red woman cared for him so. As if he could become some hero from the prophecies through sheer force of will.”

Dragons, again. That was passing strange. Satin tilted his head. I am the sword in the darkness. Wouldn’t that sword necessarily be of light? The light that brings the dawn. But that was coincidence, surely. Tales of magic swords were common as anything, and besides, it was just some old myth. “Why would you want to become a man who kills his own wife?”

“You know, I’ve no idea.” Jon huffed, shuffling his papers. “Remind me to never aspire to kingship. It must poison the mind.”

A little while after that, Jon went to bed. As soon as he saw the firelight die, Satin left the armoury without a sound, crossing the grounds with his hood up. If anyone else is out this late, they’re using the wormways. Unseen, he stole into the sept once more. Not for perfume, for something else. The hank of lace that hung above the altar to the Mother would do nicely nestled in Alys’ hair. In its place he left a scrap of black velvet. With soft feet, he left the veil outside her door in the dead of night for her to find come morning. With any luck, he’d be able to return it before Cellador even noticed.

XI.

“Is it done?” he asked in a puff of white air. And so it was.

Lady Alys looked beautiful in white, like a maiden from the songs, and one of the ladies had done her hair up in a braid, crowning her with the swirl of lace he’d left her. Her dress brushed the snow, and she drew her bride’s cloak closer to her chest, bronze accents glinting. The light of the ditchfire was sparkling in the eyes of both the bride and groom. The Magnar was clad for battle in his shirt of scales and heavy furs, but a shy smile was breaking out across his face as he scrabbled for Alys’ hand. He looked half a boy all of a sudden. It was all very sweet.

The Red God loved a ceremony, it seemed. It had taken ages, though perhaps not as long as it might have done in a sept. The couple picked their way around the ditch together as some of the queen’s men began to sing a lilting song of praise. But the yard was emptier than it should’ve been, and the falling snow was beginning to tamp down the holy fire. As he’d expected, certain black brothers hadn’t deigned to show up in protest of Jon’s alleged meddling in certain affairs, Marsh and Yarwyck among them. Satin was sure they’d turn out to the cellar hall for the feast, though. Typical.

“Done and done,” Mully grumbled beside him. “And a good thing. They’re married and I’m half-frozen. Hobb’s mulled some wine with cinnamon and cloves. That’ll warm us some.”

Owen furrowed his brow. “What’s cloves?” Arron burst out laughing, but poor Owen didn’t quite grasp why.

The crowd headed towards the cellar hall, everyone quietly muttering amongst themselves. Jon walked a bit ahead of them, and Satin scrambled to keep up, shadowing his side.

“Will my lord be feasting with us?” Mully asked him.

“Shortly. I have other matters to attend to first, however.” Jon cut across the crowd to Queen Selyse, Satin at his heels and Ghost padding behind them. The queen was babbling airily about the rites and ceremony to some of her men.

“…Oh, you cannot know how many times I have begged Stannis to let us be wed again, a true joining of body and spirit blessed by the Lord of Light. I know that I could give His Grace more children if we were bound in fire,” she was saying. Pyp’s old jape about Stannis and Jon swam to the front of Satin’s mind suddenly, and then it was all he could do not to laugh. Perhaps the self-alleged king really wasn’t interested in women, if he could not get his wife to bed at all.

Jon bowed slightly before her, and she stopped in her tracks, eyeing him disdainfully. “If it please Your Grace, the feast awaits.”

“To be sure,” she said with an uncertain glance at the direwolf, who had sat right in her line of sight. “Lady Melisandre knows the way.”

The red woman was expressionless, but stepped apart from the group. “I must attend my fires, Your Grace. Perhaps R’hllor will vouchsafe me a glimpse of His Grace. A glimpse of some great victory, mayhaps.”

It sounded plainly like a lie, but Selyse only made a stricken face. “Oh. To be sure. Let us pray for a vision of our lord…”

Jon watched her with cutting eyes. “Satin, show Her Grace to her place.”

He stepped forward to do so; he was hungry himself besides. But before he could lead them to the hall Ser Malegorn staggered toward him, puffing out his chest. “We shall not be requiring your… steward,” he said sharply. Oh, just call me a whore, you great buffoon, we all know that’s what you mean. Satin grimaced and stepped back behind Jon, whose eyes narrowed, as if in anger. Or perhaps calculation.

But he only bowed again. “As you wish. I shall join you shortly.” Selyse and her men tottered off to the feast hall, and without another word Jon crossed over to Melisandre, who was turning away. Her head whipped back when the antler-headed fool Patchface began to sing one of his eerie songs. Satin hung back awkwardly beside Ghost, not sure if he was meant to follow the queen’s men to the feast. He supposed if Jon didn’t send him away, he was meant to linger. And he really didn’t want to chance another meeting with Ser Malegorn.

“…That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.” Her speech was soft, but Satin heard it well enough.

But Jon was watching Melisandre carefully. “You see fools in your fire, but no hint of Stannis?”

“When I search for him all I see is snow.”

“Would you know if the king was dead?”

“He is not dead. Stannis is the Lord’s chosen, destined to lead the fight against the dark. I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt.” So it’s true, she thinks him some promised hero. Jon’s words about the tale echoed in his mind. A fool who killed his wife for a sword.

Jon’s mouth twitched. “Stannis Baratheon was the Lord of Dragonstone, but he was not born there. He was born at Storm’s End, like his brothers.” He frowned. “And what of Mance? Is he lost as well? What do your fires show?”

Satin blinked. Mance? Did he hear that right? But that couldn’t be. Mance Rayder had burned alive months ago. Why were they discussing Mance?

Her face was unreadable. “The same, I fear. Only snow.”

Satin turned away, trembling, and quietly backed away from the conversation on soft feet. It seemed he wasn’t supposed to be listening after all. He wasn’t supposed to know. Jon didn’t seem to notice he’d been there at all. If Mance is alive… This was bad. Ridiculously, impossibly bad.

But the words carried in the wind even as he turned. It was a wonder the rest of the yard was empty. “…I am seeing skulls,” the red woman was saying. “And you. I see your face every time I look into the flames. The danger that I warned you of grows very close.”

That was worse. If Jon had schemed with the red woman to burn the wrong man, if they had sent the wildling king off on some mad quest, if there was some danger lurking beyond all their comprehension… Their conversation trailed off beyond his hearing as he moved farther away from the yard. Ghost looked back at him with dark eyes and whined.

His head was abuzz as he entered the hall. If any of the men found out about Mance– whatever the truth really was about Mance– half of them might turn against Lord Snow in an instant. He had spared a deserter and covered it up. Had she used some trickery to switch their faces, and sent the King-Beyond-The-Wall away to do her bidding? And what about the Horn of Joramun, was that a fake, too? And why should Melisandre be seeing Jon’s face in her flames? What did he have to do with it all? And why would he go along with her plan? he thought, miserably. 

Briefly he considered alerting someone about it. Someone who would know what to do. But then again, wasn’t this his duty? To keep Jon Snow’s secrets? To stand behind him, whatever the cost? Whatever the choices he had to make? Jon has saved us all thrice over. He wouldn’t lie for nothing. He had to believe that this wasn’t for nothing.

He hadn’t even realized he’d sat down until Arron poked him in the side, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Satin. Gods, what’s with you tonight?”

It was crowded in the cellar, the smell of smoke in the air. The queen and her men were sat at the dais with the bride and groom, making loud toasts, and some of the free folk were playing music, pipes and drums and that. “Nothing. I’m alright.” But Jon’s words to Melisandre bit into his heart like cold steel.

Arron gave him a look that said, Sure you are. They were sat with some of the stewards that weren’t on serving duty, right at the back, and a few of the younger rangers. “Did you hear the red woman earlier? What was she on about, then? ‘Alone we are born and alone we die, but as we walk through this black vale…’” Arron snorted into his ale. “Cheering thing to say, at a wedding. Couldn’t have cut the sermon a bit shorter? I had icemelt running down my back by the end.”

“Careful,” Hop-Robin cut in. “Wouldn’t want Lord Snow to clout you for insulting a priestess.”

Everyone laughed but Satin, who only sipped his wine, lost in thought.

Before the first course, Jon finally entered the hall, lowering his hood and going to sit by Lady Alys on the dais. The meal passed by quickly, in a flurry of toasts and the rambunctious banter of the men at his table, but he found it hard to listen attentively. Then the dancing began.

“My lady?”

The voice was light, laughing. He looked up to see Joanna, grinning down at him and extending an arm. He took it, getting up from his seat. “My lord.”

“Do you dance?”

He took her by the waist with one hand and clasped her palm in the other. “Oh, not so much.” I used to, though. “But I’m passable.” He twirled her in time with the music, her brown skirts lifting off the ground.

She giggled. “Oh, more than passable, I think.”

Joanna chattered on and on as the song progressed. She was near as good a dancer as she was a talker. They were surrounded by couples, mostly the knights and queen’s men, as well as every last serving girl and scullery maid they could rouse to act as partners, but some black brothers too. Ulmer looked to be having the time of his life. When the song ended, she moved on to find some dour page, but motioned one of her other friends to dance with him, one Marei Waters, freckled all over. She was courteous enough, but shy as anything, always looking at her feet.

When another song began and Sansara found her way into his arms he was relieved. She was wearing that green dress. “You look lovely, my lady,” he said as he took her hand.

She kicked his shin lightly. “That trick may work on Jo…”

He grinned. “My apologies.” This song was strange. One of the wildlings was playing a wooden lyre, another a bone flute. It was melancholy, lilting, unlike any other song he’d ever heard, but not unpleasant. It was tricky to dance to, but they found a suitable rhythm. “Did you enjoy the ceremony much? I suppose I never asked if the Red God’s yours as well.”

But she was looking behind him, over his shoulder, utterly distracted. “You know,” she said under her breath, leaning in a bit closer, “Lord Snow’s been watching you all night. Since the dancing started.”

Satin nearly let go of her. “What?” he managed, hoarsely. There were an awful lot of people dancing. Surely he was just surveying the floor.

Skillfully, she spun them around so he could see. Sure enough, he caught Jon’s gaze across the hall, and it was pointed right at him. But just as Satin’s eyes fell on him, he turned away, to Alys Karstark, and began to talk with her, as if it had only been a cursory glance. Satin looked back wordlessly at Sansara, who shrugged. “He’s not the only one. Ser Patrek, too. You see him? With the stars on his cloak.”

Ser Patrek was a burly man, tall, watching him from the dais. There was something hungry in his stare. Satin looked away quickly, discomfort settling in his stomach. “Right.”

Sansara’s eyes were kind. “That’s normal for you, then?”

Jon isn’t. He'd have to think more on that later. “Oh,” he said quietly, with a faint smile, “did no one tell you I was once a whore?”

She scoffed. “No, that news spread quick enough. You should hear what some of the knights say about the Lord Commander’s pet dog when they’re in their cups.” She paused. “Which is always.”

He barked out a laugh. So, my reputation precedes me? “Gods. That’s…”

“Awful?”

“Somewhat.”

“Knights.” She shrugged. “Once you wash their smallclothes, it’s hard for their words to stick so.” She raised a careful eyebrow. “But you’re not…”

“What?”

“You and he aren’t…”

He flushed. “No. What? No, he… I don’t think he…” Why does everyone keep assuming that?

Sansara’s face was unreadable. “Well, Joanna’s just lost a wager, then.”

“You two,” he snapped, though he was smiling through it. That sad song was still playing, winding down now, flute soaring. Again he remembered the red woman’s visions. “...Have you had any more of your dreams of late?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Just curious.” And Melisandre has been seeing skulls in her flames. Skulls, and fools, and Jon Snow.

She twirled him in turn. “Nothing interesting. Nothing clear. I wake frightened more and more. I get flashes of things. The sea rising, often. Eyes in the trees. Blood, sometimes, on fresh snow. That’s all, I’m afraid.”

The colour drained from his face. “That’s reassuring,” he said lightly. “Love a bit of blood.”

“I fear for you, sometimes,” Sansara said suddenly as the song ended, taking his hand off her waist softly. “I want you to be more careful.”

“Who, me?” he teased, trying to be gentle. “Careful’s all I know.”

Oh, but the elk was being carved. He excused himself with a murmured goodbye.

The rest of the night went by in a haze. They had been worried about Hobb’s ability to plate for a feast, but the courses had turned out rich and hearty, though Satin felt too woozy to eat much. He went out onto the floor with a few more serving girls, though he knew to stay away from the highborn ladies. He even danced for a spell with Arron, who had gotten progressively drunker through the night, and who blushed like a maid the whole time, as if he could not believe he was truly doing such a thing. It was passing sweet.

Satin was on his third mug of mulled wine and talking with Emrick about the climate on Fair Isle when the warhorn blew.

One blast. Jon, across the hall, tore away from an argument with Axell Florent that instant, rising from his chair. The musicians stopped. “Did you hear that?” Selyse asked into the silence.

“A warhorn, Your Grace.”

“Are we under attack?” she spluttered.

Ulmer rolled his eyes. “No, Your Grace. It’s the watchers on the wall, is all.”

That was when the second blast sounded. Arron swore under his breath.

“Two blasts,” Mully muttered, uselessly.

They fell quiet. Listening for the third. Satin caught Sansara’s eye. None came.

“Two blasts,” Jon said in the fallen quiet. “Wildlings.”

XII.

Jon went out to treat with Tormund Giantsbane in the early morning a few days hence. He returned late in the afternoon with an agreement, a plan, and Val.

Four thousand free folk were to cross through the Wall three days from then. It all seemed reasonable enough, though it left many of the men tense. Satin was sent all across the castle to inform certain high officers and a few lords that they were to attend a meeting with Lord Snow at sunset. Afterwards he managed a lonely meal in the cellar hall, then returned to the armoury, deciding to review some counts he’d gotten from Marsh. All the while, though, he thought of Mance Rayder. White wood curling black in the fire. Those terrible screams.

When that was done he swept out Jon’s cell. Then his own cell. He fed the fire. He paced around. From time to time, that huge old raven would squawk from the rafters. “Corn,” he called out, often. “Corn, corn.” Once, he said, “King.”

It was full dark when the door swung open. Jon came thundering into the solar in a flurry, rousing Ghost from where he was curled up beneath the desk and tossing his swordbelt onto a chair. “Satin, am I mad?” he demanded.

Satin near jumped out of his skin. “In… in what way, my lord?”

“All ways,” Jon said. “All of them. I don’t know, you tell me.” He took his seat at his desk, putting his head in his hands for a moment, taking a breath. “I just wish they understood,” Jon muttered finally. “About the free folk.”

Satin took the seat across from him. “My lord?”

“They’re men, aren’t they? Just as much as me or you? People? Don’t they deserve shelter?” He looked earnestly baffled. “They’re fleeing the dead. They’ve got no resources, half are starving and the other half sick. And the men make out as if they pose more a threat than those who chanced to be born below the Wall. As if there aren’t just as many southron raiders and criminals. This very castle is full of southron criminals. Shouldn’t we be standing together? Isn’t that the right thing to do? The just thing? The honourable thing?”

He’s angry. Look at him, he’s trembling. “Did something happen at the meeting?”

Jon only laughed darkly. “Oh, it’s all the same as ever. They just can’t grasp it. Or they won’t. Perhaps… perhaps I was a fool, then, to think they could just change their minds. I thought… I thought here, of all places, mayhaps they’d be more likely to throw out what they’d been taught. But they just seem to cling ever tighter.”

“The high lords, maybe,” Satin said quietly. “And we’re not all high lords.”

Jon sat back, nodded, eyes glassy. “To be sure.”

“They didn’t halt the crossing, did they?”

“No,” he said, tugging his hair out from where it was tied behind his head. “No, no. They’ll still obey me.” For now. “I’m being met with resistance everywhere I turn, though. Marsh, that round fool, he won’t keep his mouth shut. Cellador whinges as ever. The mountain lords bicker, Yarwyck’s no help.” He sighed. “It seems I’ve sent away everyone who’d take my side. Each for good reasons, but… Gods, sometimes it feels you and Leathers are the only ones left at this castle I trust.”

He tossed that last sentence out casually, as if it meant nothing at all. Satin’s throat tightened. A nervous smile flickered across his face. “Surely not.”

Jon looked up at him for one long moment, his eyes smudged by dark circles. “No, surely not, then.” He looked suddenly self-conscious. “I’m being too dramatic, I fear. It’s no trouble. No more trouble than usual, I should say.”

There was a long silence, then. All that could be heard was the crackling of the fire. “It must be terrible, my lord,” Satin blurted out, before he could stop himself.

“What?”

Truth, now. “…Being you.”

The room was quiet again for a moment. Jon, to his credit, snorted. “Aye. That’s so.”

“Why take command at all, then?”

Jon smiled a sweet smile. “It wasn’t my idea, remember? I had little choice in the matter. I was chosen.” But he suddenly looked downcast. “I suppose… I thought perhaps I could do better. When I was with the free folk I found that they were only men. Some good, some bad. Most in between. I thought, here, I could help.” His mouth twisted. “But it’s been more difficult than I anticipated. You would think peace would be simpler than war.”

“Would I?”

There, that tiny smile again. “Oh, I suppose I wouldn’t know.” When he spoke again his voice was thick. “Stannis... Stannis offered me Winterfell, you know. Before the election. He said if I so chose he’d… free me. Make me a Stark. Give me a lordship, and Val." You could hear a pin drop. "I said no.” Satin hadn’t known. How could he have known? “Every one of your names is etched on my heart,” Jon said, smiling sadly. “Do you know that?”

And Satin did not doubt it. Could not doubt it. It was then Satin knew, deep in his stomach, that Jon Snow was no wildling. He was no high lord, either. Though he was both, and other things, too, all at once. But now, in the low light, he was just a boy, miserable, damned. In certain sheens, sure, he could nearly be a hero from the songs, dark hair streaming, that magic sword held high– but heroes generally didn’t have to barter for loans. Or think about the logistics of waste management. Heroes would have said yes to Stannis’ offer in a heartbeat, they would have retaken their home with blood and fire. Heroes wouldn’t linger at a wasteland to shepherd the hated and the starving towards shelter. It seemed an impossibly rare thing.

He wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t stop thinking about the battle at the Wall, those months ago. They way Jon had searched and searched. The look in his eye, like a frightened colt. The children dead and dying at their feet. Red hair like fled blood.

“Who was she?” he asked gently. Jon’s head snapped up.

“Who?”

“That woman. After the battle. The one you found.” Remember? I was there. I saw. I listened.

Jon’s eyes were shining now, he noticed. It was all he did– notice things. “Why do you ask?”

There were snowflakes in her hair. “I think of her a lot,” he said, truthfully. “I watched her die. I want to know what that meant.”

There was a thick pause. “She was… She…” Jon started, then stopped, then started again. “Her name was Ygritte. And… and I loved her, and she died. That’s all.” His voice dropped to a murmur. “What does it matter anymore?”

Satin kept his gaze steadily. “Of course it matters. It all matters. You know nothing, she said to you. I don’t know that that’s so true, my lord.”

Jon studied him a moment. “Then you know even less.”

“Less,” cried the raven. “Less. Lord.”

“Four thousand wildlings are to cross through the Wall at once,” Jon pressed. “All my counsellors think me mad, or craven, or a born traitor. I could not protect her. How– how can I expect myself to be able to protect four thousand more of her? Or Val, or Leathers, or the Watch itself, or– or you?”

They stared at each other.

My lord, he almost said, but didn’t. There was such distance there. Brother, he almost tried. But that wasn’t right. Nothing was right, at least not words. He wanted with every part of himself to reach out with a hand, touch his fingers lightly, not meaning anything, just a silent comfort. But he couldn’t do that either. Fear curdled in his throat. “Jon–”

Jon raised a palm. “Don’t. It’s alright.”

But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. He could not touch him. Not now, not while everything was so… fragile. Crystalline. Time hung suspended in the air. He could look, though. Which was a kind of touching. With his gaze he slowly traced the lines of Jon’s jaw, the pained furrow of his brow, his burned hand flexing slightly, the faint scars clawing across one eye. “I know some things,” he said, soft as silk. “I know you know what’s right. And I know I’d serve you, in this. And much else.”

And I know I would probably do anything for you. That was what he didn’t say. But it was what he meant.

Jon’s face became once again unreadable. “Thank you. For your counsel.”

“Was I counselling you?”

“You’d be surprised at what counts, these days.” The moment fell away, and he stood from the desk, running his fingers through his hair. “Would you draw me a bath in my chambers? I’m afraid I’m too tired to brave the bathhouse tonight.”

There was an aching feeling in his chest. He said, “Yes, my lord.” And went.

And if Jon ever noticed the sweet scent of the seven oils that Satin poured into the steaming water to ease his aching bones, he did not mention it aloud.

XIII.

And so it was that the wildlings crossed the Wall– Jon on a tall grey courser Arron had helped pick out, and Satin standing beside him, taking down any pertinent notes about this chieftain or that, the practices of certain tribes versus others, all dictated by the gruff voice of Tormund Giantsbane, a man who turned out to be much older and bolder than Satin had expected.

First came the hostages. Then the warriors. Jon looked noble as anything, hood around his shoulders and cloak streaming in the breeze. Tall and solemn, but laughing every so often at some comment of Tormund’s. He looked down warmly at everyone who came forward to greet him.

None knelt, but many swore oaths. Satin took gifts for Jon from Devyn Sealskinner and Harle Huntsman, the first round and smiling, the second hardened and lean. Kyleg of the Wooden Ear swore a queer oath, talking of earth and water, bronze and iron, ice and fire. Satin noted it down in case it meant something. He’d ask Leathers about it later. Soren Shieldbreaker said his axe was Jon Snow’s, and Howd Wanderer of the white waste offered his rusty sword. Spearwives swore on their children or, sometimes, their husbands. One even swore on her wife.

One wildling stalked forward in the pale light of the snow sky on soft feet, cutting a frightening shape across the blank snow. The crowds parted when they passed. The warrior was near shapeless in a dark hooded cloak fringed by long black feathers– this was no crow. This one was almost a raven. They carried a long ash staff, and hid their face beneath a white weirwood mask with no mouth and running red eyes.

Like blood. Like sap.

When the warrior arrived before Jon Snow, the mask tilted up, revealing a woman’s face. Or… was it a woman? Satin could not be sure. Black hair spilled down her shoulders, dark eyes glinting below thick eyebrows. She looked to be in her forties, flat-faced, with nut-brown skin and a strange clay-hewn beauty. Thin tattoos crept up her chin, and there was another in the middle of her forehead– a red circle. A third eye. A small smile flickered across her lips.

“Morna White Mask,” Tormund announced gruffly. “The warrior witch of Antler River.” He turned to Jon. “A seer of the deep woods, and no spearwife. A fierce killer all the same.” Jon inclined his head politely from atop his horse.

Morna sauntered forward, taking Jon’s gloved hand from below him and kissing it lightly. “Lord Snow. From this day forth I shall be your man.” Her voice was lilting, strangely accented. “Or your woman. Whichever you prefer.”

Jon seemed to have nothing to say to that, gently pulling his hand back and bowing his head. Tormund grinned. Morna gave a cursory nod to Satin, and then to Ghost, before tilting the mask back down over her face, turning, and making her way to the gate. The wolf whined after her.

“Odd woman,” Jon said to Tormund once she’d left.

“I wouldn’t say as much aloud, Snow. Her band’s as fierce a group of fighters as you’ll see this side of the Neck. They say her visions come true. Aye, and I know they have.”

“What do you suppose she meant? To be my man or woman?”

A loud guffaw. “It seems she don’t want to make conclusions one way or the other.”

From this day forth I shall be your man. The words echoed in Satin’s mind. The Wanderer’s sword, the Shieldbreaker’s axe… And those strange words of Kyleg’s… I pledge my faith to you and swear it. By earth and water. By bronze and iron. By ice and fire. Had they ever spoken of the realm they were to enter? What had they said about the Watch? Had they said anything about the Watch? He wondered, briefly, how they would feel if they learned Mance Rayder was still alive.

They’re not swearing to the realm at all, he realized suddenly, almost dropping Devyn’s sealskin hat. Jon and Tormund’s conversation seemed to fade. How could he be so blind? These oaths were not for Westeros. He had been foolish to assume so in the first place. They weren’t swearing obedience to the Watch, or Stannis Baratheon, or little King Tommen down in King’s Landing. They weren’t swearing to the Starks of Winterfell, or the Boltons of the Dreadfort, or even the ghost of Mance Rayder.

They were all swearing oaths to Jon Snow.

He felt in a daze all the rest of the day, until darkness began to fall with the snow. He had been standing in the cold too long. At some point Jon passed him Tormund’s skin of mead, which helped some. Eventually he was sent away before the rear guard arrived, instructed to survey how the free folk were settling in and get some warm food in him. He left thankfully, though not only because he wanted to get out of the cold. His mind was buzzing with questions.

He found his way to the cellar hall, but was turned away by Dannel, who told him it had filled right up. “Too many for a single feast,” he said with a laugh. “So we’ve split it. You’ll have to go to the Shieldhall.”

And for the first time the Shieldhall was lit with torches and filling fast. Not just with wildlings, but black brothers, curious to see the three thousand new members of the realm that had crossed over. Satin was jostled into the line for food behind two Watch men, talking spiritedly.

“Four deaths by morning. Under or over?”

“Four? D’you think anybody’d break the peace so quick? Surely not four.”

“Under, then? I’ll take over.”

“Loser takes the other’s next morning watch, then.”

“Done.”

“Four, though? You’re mad. You saw them, all cowed, Lord Snow took their oaths easy enough. Liddle always says that in the north they take their oaths seriously.”

“Well, Snow’s a fool if he thinks the wildlings will just turn peaceful all sudden, ’n that. And bugger their oaths. They’re treacherous things, and for good reason. We killed their king, didn’t we?”

“Oh, he’s a fool for certain. But… that was months and months ago. Why should they still be angry about Mance?”

“Are you blind or just stupid? They chose him, didn’t they? You think a wildling can’t hold a grudge? They’re wildlings.”

Their chattering faded quickly. Satin got a scoop of stew, but he nearly didn’t notice until Hobb yelled at him to keep moving. They chose him, didn’t they? He took his food and moved towards the benches as if in a dream. At random he sat at a table near the back, all in shadow, and began to eat, almost methodically, lost in his thoughts.

Wildlings chose their own kings. Without a King-Beyond-The-Wall still living, he’d nearly forgotten that. It hardly seemed important anymore. Gerrick Kingsblood had claimed some distant kinship to a king from ages past when he’d sworn his own vows that morning, but everyone knew that made no matter. The position wasn’t hereditary. It was established through persuasion, force, reason, guile. Bargains and bribes, treaties and terror. Power– that was all it was. A name repeated by so many it took on its own queer sort of power. They did not kneel to their kings, no– they just swore their swords. They did not kneel to anyone.

And the wildlings had sworn their swords to Jon Snow.

“Boy.”

He near jumped right out of his blacks. He hadn’t even noticed that Morna White Mask had sat down right beside him.

She still cut an intimidating figure, taller than him and– it seemed– stronger, too, though it was hard to tell below her heavy cloak, which she kept on even in the stifling heat of the hall. Her long staff was strapped to her back. Her mask was tilted up just enough for her to bring her spoon to her mouth, but still covered her eyes. “You look pained.”

Satin straightened himself. “No, my lady. I apologize if it seemed so.”

She snorted. “My lady? Is this some southron joke?”

“…My lord?” he attempted.

“You were standing by Jon Snow,” she said smoothly, ignoring him. “Are you his thrall, then?”

Satin nearly spat out his wine. “His steward.” He scrabbled to think of the right honourifics, but it seemed she wanted none. He wanted so desperately to try to read her face, but she had robbed him of that. “I take care of–”

“I know what a steward is.” She seemed intrigued, though. “Your young lord. Tell me more of him. I’ve heard things, of course. I see things, too. Enough to impress me, but you seem well poised to be informed, and I am curious.”

Curious enough to crown him? “There is much to tell,” he started, falteringly. Which was true. Where to start, with someone like Jon Snow? “He trained to fight and lead from within the walls of Winterfell. He joined the Watch for…” For what? He had been fourteen and stupid, by his own admission. “…Honour,” he decided. It was vague enough to fit. “He sought to defend the realm. A boyish dream, until he saved the Lord Commander from a wight. When he went beyond the Wall, he learnt there was more than just one realm he sought to save.”

“A clever answer,” Morna said. “A fair story. But what of love? I heard he was chasing a woman north, not the cold.”

“She died,” Satin said carefully. “He chases no one now. Now he…” He struggled to think of an appropriate metaphor. “…He herds,” he said finally, awkwardly.

“And all of us one flock,” she mused. “He thinks of us as sheep?”

No, that wasn’t right. He noted the long tail feathers dangling from her cloak. “As ravens?” he posed.

She made a grunt. He thought maybe it was approving, but there was no way to be sure. “Does he listen? To his ravens, I mean. You can hear quite a lot, from ravens.”

Satin blinked. “He listens to all his counsellors. What was that about ravens?” Corn. He could almost hear Mormont’s raven in his head. Corn, king.

“Once, when I was young,” Morna said wistfully, “I went fishing on the river near my home. I slipped and hit my head on a rock, and did not wake for weeks. Though I woke much earlier, in a sense.” She paused. “I’ve learned a lot from ravens since. You must listen, I've always been told, to all that speak. The birds, the trees. The wind.”

Well, that was helpful. There was a pregnant pause. “This morning,” Satin began, then stopped. “When you swore your vows. You swore to Jon. You said you’d be his man.”

“Aye, boy. So I did.”

“…What does that entail?”

She sat up straighter, pushing her bowl away. “The Giantsbane spoke much of the boy. Perhaps too much. He’s always been sentimental, but… I listened as they treated, and found myself pleased with how he carried himself. Pleased enough to put some manner of trust in him. And I’ve been seeing it in my dreams, of late– the white wolf.”

With eyes like hot blood. Rubies in the night. “Ghost?”

“Perhaps. I see it running. Tearing out throats. Blood staining the snow.”

Satin’s throat closed up. Eyes in the trees. Blood, sometimes, on fresh snow. It would seem Sansara was not alone in seeing things. “You think Jon has something to do with it.”

“I don’t think anything,” Morna said simply. “I only watch. I listen. You asked me what my vow entailed. Everyone swears for different reasons. All I know is that no one else offers any hope– just your young lord. I would fight to keep that hope alive. For all our sakes.” She got up, suddenly, and gave Satin a nod. “If you will excuse me. I must needs check on my men.”

When Satin returned to the armoury later that night, he found Jon sitting at his desk having never gotten to the feast, wracked with fears over a letter from Cotter Pyke. Dead things in the water, it said. Dead things in the woods. “Gods forbid I ever get any good news,” Jon muttered. “I supposed I might be cursed.”

Satin hadn’t the heart to inform him that he may have just inadvertently become King-Beyond-The-Wall. It would only prove the point.

That night he suffered an miserable dream. Jon Snow was Lord of Winterfell, ruling from a shapeless mass of smoking stone. He stood in the Lord’s chambers holding a crown made all of winter thorns. Satin was wearing silks again, of a deep rich purple. On soft feet he crept up behind Jon and gently took the crown, placing it upon his head. Only, where it lay it dug itself into Jon’s skull, and tiny streams of blood were dripping down his forehead, and he stared dully forward in silence, not seeming to notice it at all. Neither asked why a lord should be wearing a crown. It seemed pertinent. That was all.

Satin kissed his burned hand and swore to be his man from this day forth, and Jon smiled only faintly, and drew his hand back. For it was slowly turning black.

XIV.

The wolf was growling something fierce.

He had been like that all morning. It was unsettling. He paced around the armoury restlessly, sniffing at nothing at all and baring his teeth at the door. When Mully had come in briefly from his guard for a sip of water, Ghost had snapped at his arm.

Satin dodged around him as he made his way back to Jon’s solar, holding a tray of Clydas’ mulled wine. He gave two of the flagons to Mully and Fulk at the door, then interrupted Jon’s meeting with Marsh and Yarwyck, pouring for them as they spoke. He stood behind Jon to listen while they bickered, trying his best to melt into the wall as he sipped his own wine. Jon told them of his earlier audience with the queen, and how she’d disparaged the idea of the mission to Hardhome, which was still to go through.

Hearing of the mission left a queasy feeling in Satin’s stomach. As Jon’s squire he’d be expected to follow, but from what he’d heard of the place, and the monsters that surrounded it… he shivered. Dead things in the water. Dead things in the woods.

“Her Grace is wise,” said Marsh gruffly. “Let them die.”

Jon sat back in his chair, looking nonplussed. “Is that the only counsel you can offer, my lord? Tormund is bringing eighty men. How many should we send? Shall we call upon the giants? The spearwives at Long Barrow? If we have women with us, it may put Mother Mole’s people at ease.”

“Send women, then. Send giants. Send suckling babes. Is that what my lord wishes to hear?” Bowen Marsh asked, bristling. “Send them all. The more we lose, the fewer mouths we’ll have to feed.”

Yarwyck snorted in turn. “If the wildlings at Hardhome need saving, let the wildlings here go save them. Tormund knows the way to Hardhome. To hear him talk, he can save them all himself with his huge member.” No one laughed.

“Thank you for your counsel, my lords,” Jon said, with the least thankful voice he could muster. Ghost growled again to see them go.

Then Tormund Giantsbane arrived with his warriors, and blustered into Jon’s solar to speak, all tall-talking and crude jokes. Satin was feeding the fire when their conversation broke off all of a sudden. Mully was letting Clydas in, the old steward white as a sheet and clutching something in his hands. It was a letter, which he presented to Jon shakily.

“I am being foolish, Lord Commander,” he said uncomfortably, “but… this letter frightens me. See here?”

Satin stood up, looking from across the room. Bastard, it said, scrawled on the outside above a smear of pink wax. Jon cracked it open from his seat, unrolling it and scanning it.

“You were right to come at once,” Jon said softly. He read the letter, slow, still, silent. His jaw set. His eyes grew cold. He stared at it for a long time after finishing it, eyes unmoving. It was silent in the solar. Only the sound of Ghost’s pacing outside could be heard, faint scuffles through the door.

“Snow?” Tormund prompted. “You look like your father’s bloody head just rolled out o’ that paper.”

Jon waited a moment to answer him, straightening in his chair. When he spoke his voice was thick. “Mully, help Clydas back to his chambers. The night is dark, and the paths will be slippery with snow. Satin, go with them.”

Satin nearly protested. Something was wrong, deeply wrong, he could see it on Jon’s face. He didn’t want to leave him, not if there was something he could do to help. But then he only nodded and followed Mully. The snows outside were building back up again, and Clydas needed to lean on them both.

“What was in that letter, d’you think?” he asked Clydas, who blanched even more.

“It came from the Boltons, I believe,” he said, his teeth chattering. “It seems they continue to hold Winterfell. Perhaps that means they’ve defeated Stannis and his men, though it is not my place to know. I did not look inside, but… Bastard, it said. Whoever sent it was angry. Angry with Lord Snow.”

Who isn’t angry with Lord Snow, these days? he almost japed. “It’s not as if he can do much about it,” he made himself say. “The Night’s Watch takes no part, I thought.”

“It would seem so. But the Boltons hold Jon’s sister. The son, he married her. The bastard boy. And they say queer things about him, if I recall correctly.”

He’d nearly forgotten about that. He remembered how cold Jon’s eyes had gotten, reading the letter, and wondered about little Arya Stark. They reached Clydas’ chambers and Satin busied himself building a fire to warm the old steward, while Mully left quick enough. He figured he’d been sent off for a reason, so that Jon and Tormund could hold their discussion in private, so while Clydas pottered around in the back sorting herbs, he browsed some of the books littering the shelves listlessly, all a bunch of dusty Targaryen histories and records of old Lords Commander from hundreds of years ago.

Though he wasn’t truly reading any of it, just turning pages perched on an empty sickbed. He was stuck in his thoughts, everything roiling together, so tangled it felt like madness to unravel it.  Everything had gotten so complicated. It had only been a year ago that the castle had been near-empty, and he had been holding his sword all wrong. Memories swirled together. The wildlings, each swearing their swords and spears. Melisandre and Sansara, seeing blood, and dangers in the dark, and little girls dreaming of dragons. The mask of the Stranger, staring with Morna’s red eyes, the call of wind. You can’t take that, that’s sacred, Matthar had told him in the sept. That’s for knights. That’s for kings.

Corn, corn, king.

He put away the book about Daeron the Young Dragon and stared dully at the wall. There was something he was missing, surely. This all must be leading to something. Some narrative, some culmination. Remind me to never aspire to kingship, Jon had said. It must poison the mind. He had never been one to put faith in dreams and prophecies and the squawking of birds, but here, at the edge of the world, among giants and wights and great white wolves, how could he turn his nose down at signs in the sky? It was all ballooning out of reach, so big and yawning he could no longer grasp it, could no longer place himself in the story. If he had ever had a place in this story.

No, he thought bitterly. Don’t be stupid. Life is not a song.

He stayed in the warmth of Clydas’ chambers a deal longer, making himself useful while he waited, sorting supplies and dusting shelves and that, idle work that he could busy himself with. Blithely he recalled he’d never asked Jon about giving him that haircut. Tomorrow, he vowed. When all this is said and done.

Jon would be making his plans for Hardhome known at the Shieldhall sometime soon, to the gathered free folk and Watch men, but Satin felt too exhausted to attend. He’d get the pertinent news from Jon after it had ended, after all. From the window he could see men carrying benches in to prepare for the speech, as darkness fell on the Wall. There was still some bread and cheese in the solar from when they’d fed Tormund earlier, he recalled. It was there he headed now, ignoring the growing crowd around the Shieldhall, many more wildlings than black brothers from what he could see.

He nearly knocked right into someone walking quickly in the opposite direction. He blinked up at Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain, still watching him with those cold, angry eyes.

“Watch your step,” the knight snapped, shoving past in the direction of Hardin’s Tower before he could apologize.

The snow was thick again, his boots half sinking into the drifts. He drew his hood tightly around his head, finally reaching the armoury, finding it empty and unguarded but for Ghost, who was still bristling. Satin grabbed him by the scruff as he entered, making sure the wolf wouldn’t be able to get out. Jon was worried he might seek out that massive boar, but Satin had other worries on his mind. Blood on the snow. No, better to keep Ghost under guard. In case he had any throats he wanted to tear out.

He meandered over to the solar and got himself a bite to eat, then took his hair down from where it was pinned back, shuffling the papers on Jon’s desk into a firmer pile. He noted that Jon had taken the pink-sealed letter with him. That was odd. Why should the letter factor in his plans for Hardhome? Maybe I should’ve gone to the Shieldhall after all.

Ghost was whimpering something awful. Sighing, he went back through to the armoury and clicked his tongue at the beast. He didn’t move. He was staring at the door, teeth bared. Ears flat against his head.

Somewhere faraway, someone– perhaps the wind– was screaming. It sounded familiar. It sounded terribly strange. He shook his head, stepping closer to the door. It wasn’t the wind at all. Ghost was growling louder now, rougher, angrier, tail up and fur bristling. Though he never barked. Not once.

Something was rising in his gut. Likely fear. With shaking hands he bolted the armoury door. The shouting got louder, more frantic, more voices added to the song. He didn’t know what it could be. Surely the meeting hadn’t come to blows, but with so many wildlings in one place… Something terrible had transpired, for certain. It was better he was here. And Jon would manage without him, with that magic sword of his and all. Surely.

The old raven was in the rafters, cawing wordlessly. Ghost leapt up at the door, scrabbling at it violently. Satin pulled him down, breathing heavily, and he knelt to the level of the beast’s face, taking it by the sides of its chin, stroking the whiskers dotting his cheeks, trying his best to soothe him from his fright.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “It’s alright, just… quiet, Ghost.” There was fear in his voice, but he tried to push it down. “It’ll be alright, sweet thing.” And all of a sudden Ghost went completely still. And silent as a lamb. He forced a little smile, stroking him gently behind the ears.

And the direwolf stared up at him with Jon Snow’s burning eyes.

Like blood. Like sap.