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The blade kissed his nape, and Theon shivered.
Or mayhaps it was a laugh, knocked loose from somewhere in his chest. It floated in the air, a pale shimmering cloud.
The bastard did not laugh. The shadow of him lurked in the corner of Theon’s eye, dark and certain.
The cold weight of the blade lifted. Theon waited. Another laugh threatened to leap from his mouth, but he swallowed it down. I am not mad, he told himself, madly.
“I saved her,” he said to Snow’s shadow, though it came out whisper-thin. The weather had turned, and Theon couldn’t tell if the bastard had heard him over the wind. “We flew.”
The raven. There had been a raven perched on Snow’s shoulder when his brothers dumped Theon at his feet. It was black and glossy, with eyes like polished onyx.
When he raised his head to look at the bird, Theon half-expected to find Ramsay smiling down at him, his fat lips curled up like the end of a flaying knife. There would be no talk of fingers or toes then. He would take a hand, a foot, a leg. The world went foggy as Theon imagined it—the bite of the saw as it ripped through skin and sinew and bone, the scream as it tore open his throat. Skin, peeled back from wet, pulsing flesh, left to dry and crack and burn.
Then Theon blinked, and the face came into focus. The eyes were grey and mistrusting, the mouth thin and dour. Eddard Stark, he realized with a jolt of terror, returned to take my head.
Around the man’s neck he expected a red, raw fissure, but he found only smooth flesh. No, not the father, he realized, his empty stomach clenching. The son.
Jon Snow was no Eddard Stark. He was too rangy, too spare, too hungry. But neither did he look like the boy Theon remembered, the sullen bastard, skulking around Winterfell like a stray dog.
“Theon,” Jon had said, a faint sliver of disbelief in his voice. He had been holding the pommel of his sword, and the leather of his glove creaked as his fingers flexed.
“Theon,” the raven had quorked. “Theon, Theon, Theon.”
It knows me, he thought. That made him giggle, and Snow’s icy mask cracked, but there was no reading the look on his face.
Bent over the butcher’s block, his legs cramped so hard that tears pricked in the corners of his eyes. When they fell—when they flew—the spot where they jumped had snows piled up forty feet high. A cold white pillow, but not so soft.
His knees still ached from the impact, and Jeyne had whimpered and wept from pain all the way to the Wall. That was his fault. He had landed on top of her, and broken some of her ribs.
Jeyne had still been sobbing when they arrived at Castle Black. The castle had reeked of ash and cooked flesh, and long black tongues of soot licked up from the shattered windows and crumbling walls. Distantly, Theon remembered how hungry he was. There was sparse game to be had in the wolfswood, and he had no bow, nor the strength to draw it.
When it was safe enough to stop, they fished in the deep waters of the rivers, cracking open the ice to snare a meal with a loose thread from Jeyne’s pink spotted dress. They caught only a few sluggish trout, and elsewise they did not leave the saddle, not even to sleep.
As the days dragged on, empty save for terror and agony, he felt something heavier than sleep press down on him. It was gentle and insistent, almost inviting, wrapping around his bones and softening the ache in his joints. It lingered in the corner of his eye, only to dart away when he turned to look.
On the tenth day, the horse died. They had not bothered to give it a name. Jeyne cried for it, or perhaps she cried for them. Carving a steak from its cooling flank and drinking its still-hot blood, Theon loved that horse more than he had ever loved any creature.
In the chill of Castle Black, Jeyne was sobbing anew. Someone had draped her in a black cloak, and the frayed ends of it stirred fitfully in the wind. Mayhaps Snow had warned her away; mayhaps he wanted her to look.
Theon waited. He could feel the sword floating somewhere above him, a dark cloud swollen with rain. His breath was coming quickly now, filling the air with mist.
The shadowy figure shifted, and Theon closed his eyes. He was back in the wolfswood. It was quiet there, as if he and Jeyne were the only living things left in the world. They were riding pillion, and she was warm before him. He wrapped trembling arms around her narrow waist, and felt her press back against him, tucking her blackened nose into his neck. It is not such a terrible way to die, he had thought. There were no hounds baying, no men shouting. Only them and the cold. No, not so terrible.
Frost crunched under Snow’s feet as he moved. Minutes stretched into hours, into days, into years, but the stroke never came.
“Take him to the ice cells,” Jon said at last, his voice hard and ragged. Theon opened his eyes in time to be hauled up, bewildered. His legs hung limp and useless beneath him, and the black brothers were so rough it felt as though they would rip his arms from their sockets.
They are, indeed, icy, Theon observed, giggling, as they tossed him into one of the cells.
In the dimness, he saw that the walls were tinted blue, as if cut from sapphire, and Even the floors were carved of ice, though the surface was scuffed and smeared here and there with old brown blood. The only thing not made of ice was the heavy oaken door, and its rusted iron hinge screamed as it was pulled shut.
Shivering atop his bed of ice, Theon missed the bastard’s girls. The Dreadfort’s kennels were cold at night, but not so frigid as Castle Black. Red Jeyne would lay on his legs to keep them warm, while Kyra licked at the blood matted in his hair. He even missed their snuffling, the way their legs twitched and kicked as they dreamt of the hunt.
Theon was shaking so violently that it was a struggle just to breathe. He could almost feel the weight of Helicent pressing against his side, Maude’s ears like velvet between his fingers.
Then the door opened, and the sun filled the narrow room. Theon squinted against the light, twinkling like a thousand stars against the icy walls. But the sun was only a lantern, carried by Jon Snow in a tight fist. Jeyne was beside him, her eyes red-rimmed and full of grief.
“Theon,” she said, in a small, miserable voice.
Jeyne, he almost replied, shivering with relief as much as cold. He swallowed painfully. “Arya.”
Jon Snow’s frown deepened, but he said nothing. Theon no longer had the strength to stand, so Snow slung his arm about his shoulders and heaved him up. As they struggled their way past Castle Black’s ruined buildings, Theon wondered if Jon had merely been gathering his nerve. The boy had never loved him, nor truly liked him, but they had shared a castle once, a table.
But the butcher’s block was gone, and no nooses hung from the tower’s eaves. There is still time yet, he reminded himself, and it was almost a comfort. Death did not frighten Theon Greyjoy. Death would mean an end to pain.
Snow led him into a warm room behind the Night’s Watch’s armory. There was a roaring fire at the far end of the room, and a lit brazier at the center. Jeyne was quick to draw a chair up, and Theon collapsed into it, feeble muscles fluttering.
He had only a few moments to blink the black spots from his eyes before a beast melted out of the shadows. It was white as snow with eyes like twin drops of blood. A weirwood made flesh, he thought, unnerved and enraptured.
Even as the direwolf drew near to sniff at him, Theon could not find it in himself to be afraid. He touched one of the direwolf’s pricked ears, hand trembling. It was soft.
“Ghost,” he croaked.
Ghost did not growl at him. He did not make any sound at all. The direwolf simply sat back on his haunches, looking at him with a weirwood’s pensive eyes. Theon carded his fingers through the pale fur of Ghost’s scruff—that had always been Willow’s favorite spot.
Jeyne had disappeared, Theon realized, snatching his hand back and looking about the room. Only Jon remained, watching, silent and tense.
Mayhaps he means to torture me, Theon wondered, too exhausted to muster much fear. Mayhaps he has brought me here to tear out my tongue and gouge out my eyes.
He could have done it in the yard, a sneering voice replied. He does not need the privacy to hurt you.
The truth of it was soothing. It shouldn’t have been, but Theon sagged into his chair, boneless. Another few beats of silence passed, and he almost drifted off. He had learned how to sleep through the cold, the hunger, the pain.
“Why?” Jon said suddenly, his voice loud in the hush of the room.
“Why?” Theon echoed. His mind was still thawing, and it moved slow as honey. Why what?
“Bran,” Snow choked out. “And Rickon. Why?”
Bran? Rickon? It felt like so long ago, another life. Two small heads atop two small spikes, skinned and dipped in tar. Small hands, grasping at a golden kraken cloak. His eyes had grown so heavy that he could hardly keep them open, but he could feel those little hands clawing at his tattered pink-brown tunic, the color of old meat.
“What did you do with their direwolves?” Jon pressed. A raw edge of grief had slipped into his voice. “I saw one, at Queenscrown, a grey direwolf… it knew me.”
The heart tree, at Winterfell, it knew my name, Theon tried to reply, but his lips would not move. The old gods. Theon, I heard them whisper. There was no wind but the leaves were moving. Theon.
He did not remember falling asleep, but when he woke again, the room was empty. He was covered in a pile of warm furs, and a straw mattress whispered noisily beneath him as he shifted. For a moment, it did not seem real.
Theon oft dreamt of his bed in the early days after… after. He dreamt of the quarters the Starks had given him in their Great Keep, near the bottom of the stair. He dreamt of the bedchamber that had once belonged to a boy named Theon, high up in Pyke’s Sea Tower.
But the pain was there, and he knew it was no dream. His missing fingers and toes ached, the splinters of his teeth ground together in agony, and hunger clawed his stomach to ribbons.
Theon looked down and saw a white fur spread across the floor beside the bed. Ghost, he thought with a laugh, the noise like the rasp of old dry parchment. He had expected the beast to be Snow’s shadow, but it lounged alone, breathing softly.
At the sound, Ghost raised his massive head and let it rest on the mattress, red eyes blinking up at Theon. He reached out and touched the direwolf’s cold nose. “I meant to kill you once,” he admitted. “You and your brothers and sisters. You should not have come below the Wall. It was not your place.”
Ghost said nothing to that.
Before Theon could confess any more, the door opened. A cold gust of wind blew into the room, and with it, a fat boy dressed all in black, bearing a bowl. His face was round and red and his eyes were pale, but there was nothing cruel in them.
“Where is Arya?” Theon asked, surprised by the strength of his voice.
The fat boy set down his pot and fussed with the contents, avoiding Theon’s eyes. “She wasn’t well,” he finally admitted, handing over the bowl. “She’s resting. Her nose...”
Last Theon had seen it, Jeyne’s nose had been black as pitch. The fat boy would not say it, but it was clear enough to him that they had cut it off. He pitied Jeyne for that; Ramsay had never taken his nose, or his ears, or his eyes.
The bowl was filled with soup, still steaming and thick with chunks of meat. It would hurt him, Theon knew, but mayhaps that was how Jon wanted it.
Strangely, the fat boy—Samwell, he introduced himself, Sam from Horn Hill, or, well, I used to be—lingered as Theon ate, not quite watching. The broth was closer to gravy, and he drank it greedily, but the meat was so lean that it was too tough to chew, even when he let it soften in his mouth. Chagrined, he spat it back into the bowl.
“Are you full?” Samwell inquired, frowning nervously.
“I can’t,” Theon confessed. As you well know, he almost added, and the brief flush of anger was intoxicating, even if he hadn’t the strength to sustain it.
The fat boy took the bowl but made no move to leave. He looked around awkwardly, still avoiding Theon’s eyes.
Frightened? Of me? It was so absurd that he had to smile, but that only seemed to unnerve the boy more.
Finally, Samwell cleared his throat and took a half-step closer. “May I… may I look at your teeth?”
No, Theon might have said once, but Ramsay would simply have forced his mouth open and-
It was best not to think about. His stomach was already a roil, and he did not want to retch up the little he had eaten. It does no good to fight.
Theon nodded, and loosened his clenched jaw. The fat boy was gentle as he probed around each missing or shattered tooth, but it still took everything in him not to snap his mouth shut. Watch those teeth or I’ll knock them out, Ramsay liked to croon, gripping Theon’s jaw hard enough to leave bruises like streaks of purple paint.
By the end, he was shaking, and Samwell looked more alarmed than ever.
“I’ll be back,” the fat boy stuttered out, hastening out of the room.
When he returned, it was with a bowl of thin broth and a maester. The maester was perhaps the oldest man Theon had ever seen, of an age with Old Nan. Briefly, he wondered what had happened to the old woman. Ramsay might have kept her alive, but she was not like to have given him a good chase.
“Theon Greyjoy?” the maester inquired in a polite, aged voice, his cloudy eyes staring at nothing much at all.
Theon nodded, then realized his folly and tittered. “Theon,” he answered, “Yes, my name is Theon.” He had to remember his name.
If there was anything strange about his reply, the maester did not mention it. Instead, he drew a blue, stoppered bottle from his sleeve. Luwin used to do the same, hiding all manner of things in his grey maester’s sleeves. When Winterfell burned, a mounted man of the Dreadfort had put a spear between Luwin’s shoulders and rode over him.
As Castle Black’s maester settled into a chair, leaning heavily on his blackthorn cane, Samwell laid out a roll of metal tools. They shone like quicksilver in the firelight. “Are you sufficiently prepared?” the old man asked.
Theon went taut. “Prepared?”
“We must remove some of your teeth,” the maester replied mildly. “Those that are shattered or rotten, lest they turn to abscess.”
“Now?” Theon asked. That insolence might have won him a lazy slap from Ramsay, but Samwell merely blinked at him.
“Well…” the fat boy began uncertainly. “The sooner we get them out, the sooner they’ll heal… the sooner you’ll be able to eat properly.”
“Here,” the maester handed him the blue bottle. “Milk of the poppy. It will not hurt.”
Theon held the bottle for a moment, struck. Then, haltingly, he took a sip, and another, until the liquid was gone. It will not hurt. It was a ridiculous notion, but already he could feel his stomach unspool into something warm and languid.
“I had a tooth pulled once,” the maester prattled, as Samwell plucked a slender pair of tongs from his sheath of tools. “I was only a boy then,” he continued. “When you’re old, they fall out on their own. But I was still an acolyte of the Citadel in those days, and I had cracked a molar trying to open a metal flask. Foolish of me, but the young are always fools.”
The old man’s voice grew muffled, and his milky white eyes disappeared into a soft black fog, as if Theon had been wrapped in a woolen blanket.
Then the fog became smoke, coating his lungs in tar and stinging at his eyes. A red fire glowed beneath his feet, turning his tears to steam. The smoke grew so thick that it was like to drown him, and Theon found himself struggling against the waves of a midnight sea.
A light beckoned on some distant shoreline, held aloft by a figure cloaked in shadow. Someone was calling his name, but the waves were too fierce and he was too weak to fight them. When he looked down, the sea was an eye, a black eye, shining with malice. He screamed, but saltwater rushed into his mouth and nose, choking him.
Theon startled awake, scared and sweating, and found his mouth packed with rags. The maester was gone, but Samwell took that moment to return with a basin of fresh water.
Even after the bleeding had ceased and the damp gauze was peeled away, Theon still found himself prodding at the empty sockets, tasting the blood as it welled up against his tongue.
It hurt, but the pain was little more than a dull ache. After so long in agony, it was as near as Theon had ever felt to bliss.
Even so, he could not sleep. The absence of it—the pain—was too jarring. Unsettled, he hobbled about the room restlessly, cataloging the new emptiness of his mouth.
Thrice a day, Samwell visited with his bowls of broth and armfuls of fresh kindling for the hearth. Other days it was his black brothers—a pretty boy with curly raven hair, a small boy with ears like a bat, and a hulking bearded brute that Theon realized, after a time, was even younger than him. But Jon never returned, nor did Jeyne.
On the third day, Theon realized that she did not want to see him. He tried not to dwell on that, but there was little to do in his sparse cell but think.
On the fourth day, Samwell had one of his black brothers draw Theon a bath. The huge bearded boy brought bucket after bucket of water, while Sam of Horn Hill inspected his maimed hands and feet and applied sour-smelling salves.
Once the tub was filled, they left him alone with his terrible nakedness. Theon slipped into the tub quickly, clenching a slip of lye soap in his fist and bracing himself for the shock of cold.
The water was warm, he realized, throat tight.
On the fifth day, Theon awoke in the night to find Ghost lying beside him. The bed was so soft that he could not bring himself to sleep in it, but the direwolf let him tuck himself into its side and bury his face in its thick, white fur. Ghost smelled earthy, of smoke and blood and game.
When Theon slept that night, he dreamt of a grove of weirwoods. Some were laughing, some were weeping, and some were crying out in a tongue he could not understand. He touched one of their faces, the wood creased in sorrow, but when he pulled his hand away, it was red and wet.
By the morning, Ghost was gone, but there was fresh firewood stacked neatly beside the hearth.
On the sixth day, Jon Snow sent for him.
It was the bearded brute who marched him to the Lord Commander’s chambers. He watched Theon suspiciously, as if half-expecting him to make a mad run for the stables, or simply collapse to the ground, weak as a newborn foal.
Theon did neither. Locked in his cozy cell, he knew it was better to live by the mercy of Ned Stark’s son than Roose Bolton’s bastard.
Gripped by sudden terror, he clamped his arms around his face and clenched his jaw so hard it creaked. Ramsay Bolton, not Ramsay Snow, never Snow, never, you have to remember his name, or he will hurt you.
It took everything in him not to drop to his knees. Fear rattled at his ribs like the bars of a cage, and everything tasted of iron. You have to remember his name. You have to remember.
In fits and starts, the frenzy subsided. Theon took a long, deep breath, the cold air burning in his chest. A gentle snow was falling, more a kiss than the bitter slaps he had grown used to in the wolfswood. When it touched the mud of the yard, it turned to brown slush.
Theon watched it for a moment, and was grateful that the bearded boy did not bark at him to hurry. The stitches that closed the rent flesh of his pulled teeth had torn open, and his mouth was full of blood.
There were others in the yard—brothers in their black cloaks and kingsmen in their gold. Theon could feel their eyes, and he was tempted to smile back at them, teeth coated in red. He settled for spitting the blood onto the ground and watching it eat through the fresh, white snow.
It was only a little further to the King’s Tower. There, he was led up a narrow winding stair and into a large room. For all that the room might have been palatial in centuries past, it had grown cold and dark and dank.
Tallow candles thick as a man’s arm burned in the gloomy corners, filling the air with the stink of lard. Fresh bird droppings dotted the rushes, and a raven quorked at them from the rafters.
Jon Snow was seated at a desk at the far end of the room, frowning down at an open-faced letter. When Theon drew near, he saw that the letter’s seal was gold, not pink, and felt his legs go to water in relief.
He had thought Ramsay would be at the Wall already, menacing Castle Black with all of the force of the north. By some mercy, Stannis Baratheon had kept him busy. Not for long, he thought, laughter bubbling in his chest. Lord Ramsay will come. He wants his bride back. He wants his Reek.
Jon looked up at his approach, pinning him with dark grey eyes. Stark eyes. “Thank you, Grenn,” he told the bearded boy with a nod. “Send for her, please.”
Theon did not need to ask who.
Jon turned to him, and any warmth in his face fled. “Sit,” he commanded. Theon sat. “Some ironborn are due to arrive at the Wall within the week,” Snow said without preamble, only to pause for a moment, as if he regretted having told Theon anything at all. “Your sister is among them,” he finished.
“Asha?” Theon asked, though it came out a desperate, hopeful croak. Had she come to save him after all?
But he could read the answer in Snow’s face. No. She wouldn’t have come for him. A familiar ache bloomed in his belly. It hurt like pressing on an old bruise, one gone yellow around the edges but still tender.
“King Stannis took her prisoner after Deepwood Motte,” Jon continued. “He’s sent her to Castle Black for safekeeping. He’s going to war with the Boltons soon.”
He will lose, Theon knew, fresh terror making sweat prickle at his nape. Ramsay will smash his host, rape his queen and his ugly little daughter, then flay him with His Grace’s own burning sword.
Theon must have turned white as milk, but Snow paid him no mind. He was looking down at the letter and flexing his sword hand. “Were you close?” Jon asked, almost grudgingly.
Ramsay? Theon thought, giggling to himself. There was little he did not confide in me, the viler the better. We were close as husband and wife. Closer.
He glanced up, and found Snow giving him a queer, troubled look. Asha. He means Asha. Jon had always been fond of his own sister, Arya, he knew. “I did not love my sister as you loved yours,” Theon hastened to answer, licking his chapped lips. “Nor did she love me. Women seldom love me for long.” He had not seen Jeyne since arriving at Castle Black, and he wondered what Snow had seen fit to do with her. “And what of your sister?” he asked. “What of Arya Stark?”
Snow’s face went still and cold, as if it were carved from granite. “Arya Stark is dead.”
“And Jeyne?” Theon pressed, eyes darting around the dark room, in case someone might be listening. “What of her?”
“I will see her protected.” Jon’s tone brooked no argument, but Theon found himself seized by sudden, wild nerve.
“You cannot. Lord Ramsay will have his bride back, and he will see your Wall draped in the skins of your black brothers. You must send her away, across the Narrow Sea, somewhere beyond his grasp. You cannot protect her here. No more than you can protect yourself.”
“I can protect her better than you, Theon Turncloak,” Snow spat, standing suddenly, his chair skittering back with a screech. For a moment, his cold eyes flared hot, and his hand became a fist, drawn back like a bowstring.
He could if he wanted to, Theon thought, hunching instinctively to protect his ribs and stomach. He could beat me bloody.
He could see it in Snow’s face that he wanted to. He is no Ramsay, but I must not forget myself.
The fury in Snow’s face melted into something inscrutable, and his fist loosened. As he sat back down, he did not meet Theon’s eyes. “Why?” Snow asked, voice tight. Why Bran. Why Rickon. “I would hear it from your lips. And I shall not ask again.”
From my lips? Jeyne already had occasion to tell the bastard much and more, Theon realized with dawning horror.
He had confessed a great number of things to her on the road to the Night’s Watch. He had told of Palla the kennel girl, of Kyra and her keys. The hunts, the girls, the way they screamed. What Ramsay might do to her if he caught them.
He told her of Bran and Rickon and the miller’s sons. Reek made him kill those boys, not him Reek, but the other one. He was no kinslayer. Their mother had begged for mercy before Gelmarr cut her down with his axe. She was nothing to me, he had told Jeyne’s wide-eyed, pale face. I am no kinslayer.
She did not speak to him for three days afterward.
In the chill of Jon Snow’s chambers, Theon could taste the dread pooling in his stomach. It was better to be reviled for what he hadn’t done, than what he had. He owed Jeyne the truth, but Snow had not earned it.
“They were only miller’s boys,” he admitted. To his disappointment, there was no relief in the confession. Telling the truth lightens the soul, Maester Luwin liked to say, when Theon was still a boy and as much a liar as Maron had ever been. That had merely been another lie. His soul felt leaden.
The bearded boy, Grenn, took that moment to rap loudly on the chamber door. “She wants to see him alone,” he informed Jon.
That rankled Snow, Theon could tell, but the bastard did not argue. “Fine then. We’re done with this.”
Jon did not grab him by the arm, or shove him forward as they descended the stair, but he lingered over Theon’s shoulder, grim and rigid. The room he led him to was smaller than Snow’s own chambers, but far warmer, and there were no birds nesting in the rafters. Jon left him there, standing uneasily on the threshold.
Inside, Jeyne sat beside a brazier, hands held up to the flames. It took Theon a moment to realize why they looked so strange. Several fingers were missing—some at the first knuckle, some only at the second. On their way to the Wall, she had never taken off her doeskin gloves, but he could see now where her fingers must have gone black and shiny with frostbite.
Her nose was wrapped in a crisp white bandage, and when she looked at him, her eyes were filled with tears. To his surprise, Jeyne did not cringe from him. She threw herself into his arms, sobbing. “Theon.”
“Jeyne,” he replied, so quiet that none but her could hear it, but that succeeded only in making her keen like a wounded animal. Jeyne was stronger than he expected, and her grip was like to leave him with bruises.
When at last the girl had ceased her whimpering, Theon took her by the shoulders and forced her to meet his eyes. “You told him? All of it?”
Jeyne nodded miserably. “I was afraid… I was afraid that Jon would kill you, if he thought… Bran and Rickon…”
A year ago, Theon might have given her a chastising slap for her loose tongue, but it was all he could do to collapse gracelessly into a chair.
“I was… not as Jon had hoped.” Jeyne’s face crumpled as she spoke, and soon she began to weep again, clinging to him like a barnacle to a ship’s hull. “I hate the way they look at me. Jon pretends, for my sake, but he hates me, I know he does. He wanted Arya. I don’t blame him for that, truly I don’t. I want… I want my father. I want to go home. It hurts. It all hurts so much.”
Your father is dead, Theon thought bitterly. And Winterfell is no more.
Balon Greyjoy was dead as well, and the home he had known at Pyke had died the moment he stepped aboard Robert Baratheon’s war galley. For all that he was despised in the north, nor was he beloved on the isles. He’d had friends there once, boys he chased along the rocky shores, girls he danced with at feasts, brothers he feared, and a sister…
Mercifully, Jeyne had cried herself into a fitful sleep. Theon lifted her up in his arms, trembling. The leap came next, he remembered, the swoop in his stomach, the fall. The snow had swirled around them, and for a perfect moment, they were suspended in the air together, weightless.
As he placed Jeyne in her bed, Theon laid down beside her atop the furs. “We flew,” he told the dark, empty room.
Outside, the wind howled in reply.
Just as Snow promised, the ironborn arrived within days.
Where the kingsmen rode proudly, golden cloaks streaming and burning heart banners whipping in the wind, the ironborn shuffled in slowly, footsore and freezing. Their grim faces were hidden behind shaggy, frost-crusted beards, save for one.
“Asha!” Theon couldn’t help but smile to see her. The grin made his chapped lips crack open, and blood ran down his chin. It froze in the cold, giving him thin crimson fangs.
His sister’s head turned at the noise, and she gave him a curious, confused look. Who is this old man? Her eyes said. Then confusion became shock, and finally, horror.
“Theon?” She sounded almost afraid.
“Theon,” he repeated. “My name is Theon. You have to know your name.”
Asha blinked, her eyes dark and wide. “Theon, what… What has happened? Your hair, your teeth…” Her hand twitched up, as if to touch him, but she stopped short, mouth twisted in disgust. “Did the Bastard do this to you?”
Theon flinched so hard he felt his teeth clack together, but he kept his wits. “Ramsay Bolton, Lord Ramsay, he… he misliked my smile.”
“I see,” Asha said.
Before he could reply, one of the kingsmen stopped beside his sister, and Theon saw that he was no kingsman, nor a man at all. The woman was stout and brawny, with a ragged green surcoat over fur and boiled leather. “Who is this?” she asked gruffly.
“My brother,” Asha said, as if she could not believe it herself. “Theon.”
The woman glared at him, thick arms crossed over her chest. “Theon Turncloak.”
“The very same,” his sister replied, in a soft, incredulous voice. Laughing, he remembered, always laughing. She had mocked him at Pyke, until the tables were roaring with laughter and even their father cracked a thin, dry smile. Esgred, she had called herself, with her lord husband and suckling babe. He had hated her for that.
Looking into her black, pitying eyes, he hated her still. Mayhaps he always had, ever since he was taken and made a stranger to the isles, not her.
Theon turned and walked away from the ragged band of ironborn. With his maimed feet, his gait was half-hobble, half-stumble, but he knew Asha could not follow. The yard was thick with kingsmen and black brothers, and they would seize her before she could take a step.
She called after him, but he let the wind snatch away her words.
That did not stop Asha from dogging his steps in the days after. She was not allowed to visit his cell, but taking a meal in Castle Black’s common hall meant being accosted by his sister and her pets.
Tristifer Botley he had known since they were boys together, back on Pyke. The other, Qarl the Maid, he came to know as a pretty, smirking, blond-haired thrallson. The last, Asha introduced with a flourish. “The lovely Lady Alysane insisted on seeing me safely to Castle Black,” his sister explained. “She has kept me warm through the long, cold nights, and driven away the bears and shadowcats with her snoring.”
The woman—Alysane Mormont—grunted. “I am here for Lady Arya. She will need women about her, and loyal shields.”
“And you are both,” Asha finished.
Lady Alysane Mormont of Bear Island looked scarce more a lady than Theon did, even with her broad thighs and large breasts. She could snap him in two like dry kindling, Theon did not doubt, but Mormont did not glare at him so much anymore, not since speaking with Jeyne.
With Alysane beside her, Jeyne braved Castle Black’s common hall with him, though she still cringed at any sudden shout or jeer. They must have looked strange, seated together: the noseless Lady Arya, her crippled manservant and mountainous sworn sword, and a trio of ironborn prisoners.
His sister’s gaoler spent most of each meal fishing the choicest chunks of meat out of her soup to give to Jeyne, then devouring the rest in a few short swallows.
Asha did not dare do the same for him, thank the gods. She only harassed him ceaselessly, as sisters were wont to do.
“Eat,” Asha commanded, as they sat down to a dinner of watery parsnip soup. “You pick at it like a bird.” Even as she said it, her eyes were on some far corner of the hall, where two Eastwatch men were arguing. It hurt her to look at him, he had realized.
Qarl met his eyes at least, brow quirked in mild curiosity. The Night’s Watch’s cook had set him and Tris to peeling potatoes for that evening’s soup, and so they did, lazily and—in Tris’ case—poorly. The Botley had cut himself thrice already, but did not have the good sense to stop trying.
“Please, Theon,” Jeyne entreated softly. “Eat.”
Theon tried to eat, he always did. It did not hurt him so much anymore, but with so many teeth gone, chewing was a chore. The rest had already finished their meals by the time he had worried the first few pieces of meat to softness between his molars. He was still sucking at a stringy chunk of beef as his sister rapped impatiently on the tabletop.
“If you would be so kind,” Asha said to Mormont, with sickly sweetness, “I should like to speak to my dear brother alone.”
Alysane gave her an unamused look, then turned to Jeyne. “Are you finished, my lady?”
Jeyne gave a timid nod, and let Alysane help her up. She squeezed Theon’s shoulder as she passed, her grip feather-light. He flinched from a heavy hand, Jeyne knew, as did she.
“You’d best go with them, Qarl,” Asha added. “To protect our gentle ladies from the grumpkins and snarks.”
Asha’s boy was nothing if not clever. Qarl rose with a mummer’s bow, and left with Tris, though Botley threw his sister one last pleading look.
Idly, Theon wondered if Asha indulged them both, when cold winds drove them to share their furs. He had shared an amorous young miller’s wife and a jug of apple wine with Patrek Mallister once. And Asha is no blushing maid.
“You are not going to even ask after our lady mother?” his sister prodded, once they were alone at the table. Black brothers and kingsmen alike kept well away from them, wary of catching their ill fortune or ill repute. Mayhaps both.
“How fares Lady Alannys?” Theon inquired. He had not wanted to ask, in truth. He was afraid of the answer.
Something stubborn twitched in Asha’s jaw. “She was weak, she is weak, Theon. Grief has undone her.” The scorn on her face peeved him. “I begged you to visit her, but you refused. ‘Come peace’, you said. My little lordling was much too proud to visit his ailing mother.”
She meant to make him angry, and it was even more maddening that she had succeeded. “How was I to know?” Theon snapped. “I ought to have been welcomed with gifts and feasts, not trickery and mistrust. My position on Pyke was precarious enough, even without having disappeared from port. What if Lord Balon thought I had absconded? Fled back to Seagard to tell the wolves of his plans? He… he relied on me.” The words sounded so feeble as he said them. King Balon may never have loved him, but if he had returned with Bran and Rickon, mayhaps…
It seemed as though Asha would retort, but she only shook her head. “I don’t want to argue with you, Theon.”
“We do little else,” he pointed out.
That, strangely, made Asha laugh. For a moment, when she looked at him, there was no pity in her eyes. “You look like her, you know,” she told him, mouth slanted into something that was almost a smile. “Her hair’s gone white, her skin grey. Her eyes are always far away, and she eats little. ”
Theon tried to recall Lady Alannys’ face, the sound of her voice, but found that he could not. There was only the shape of her, a shadow. “Does she ask after me?” he asked. Does she love me? Do you?
“She does.” Asha looked away. “Often.”
Theon had expected the answer to soothe him, but it only whetted the ache inside him. He would never see Lady Alannys again.
“When it is over…” He looked down at his half-eaten bowl of soup, as if it would yield the answer. “Tell her...” But he could not think of anything to say—no proud declaration, no tender scrap of comfort.
Asha gave him a look like he was the stupidest creature the gods had ever made. “I will tell her that you were a fool, and that you’re sorry, and that you loved her well.”
“Thank you.” It was all he could say.
The sun had barely risen when Asha shook him awake, none too gently.
“Get your hands off of me, wench,” he snapped, but she dragged him up by the arm. “Who let you in?”
His chambers were supposed to be locked, though Jon Snow seldom bothered with a guard.
“The fat boy,” Asha answered. It was then that Theon noticed Samwell standing beside the door, red-faced, with his eyes pinned firmly to the floor. It was a miracle Asha had not bullied him to tears. His sister grinned like she knew some secret jape. “We have business, little brother.”
Theon glared at her as she hurried him into his fur-lined cloak and borrowed boots. Asha did not trouble him by trying to help, she knew he hated that, but she was so cheerful it was sickening.
Samwell stayed behind, fussing with a length of silver wire, it was only once they were out in the yard that Theon thought to ask where they were going.
“To find your teeth,” Asha replied, still smiling. Hers were all straight and white, save for a small chip along the top. “Where else?”
To Sunspear, Theon might have said, to eat oranges and lay with Dornish women. It might’ve made Asha laugh too, but he did not want to encourage her. He had slept poorly, as he always did, and the cold made his joints ache fiercely.
They were both prisoners, but none stopped them as they walked across the yard, the mud frozen and hard. Soon they were standing in front of the Wall. It glittered in the thin sun, milky-blue and just beginning to weep. “Has Snow given you leave?” he asked, nervous for a reason he could not name.
Asha rolled her eyes. “Where should we run off to? All that lies north is wildings and wights and more of this wretched northern cold. It’s not far. Come.”
Cringing, Theon did. Passing beneath the Wall made him shiver. The ice creaked and groaned beneath its own weight, and he could feel the heaviness of it on his shoulders. It did not seem to trouble Asha. She whistled as they went, the noise shrill and otherworldly in the tunnel of ice.
When they emerged, it was to a moat of corpses.
The bodies were burnt, though the storm had smothered the fire before it could turn them to ash and bone. Toward the center of the pile, the bodies’ black limbs were clenched close to their chests, as if to stave off the cold, while those at the edges were barely singed. Rivers of congealed fat glistened pale and cloudy in the dawn light, and the wind made swirls of snow and soot.
The heat of the flames had peeled back the dead men’s lips, giving some grimaces and others smiles. A crust of frost clung to their faces and clothes, gathered in their wildling furs and on their ragged, unbound hair.
Asha gave a scoff and forded the blackened sea of the dead. Theon half-expected some of the dead men to lurch to life, but the only movement was his sister, moving nimbly from body to body. After a time, she stopped at one corpse and bent to pry open its mouth with a finger.
Most of the wildings' teeth were rotten, Theon observed, but Asha found a few that were worth taking. She produced a pair of brutish iron tongs, doubtless pilfered from Castle Black’s forge, and went to work.
One of the teeth cracked as his sister pried it out. The sound was sharp in the early morning quiet, and Theon could not help his flinch.
“Careful now,” he called out, trying to mask the quaver in his voice. “Those are my teeth you’re breaking.”
Asha cursed colorfully and moved on to the next. That one slid out of its socket almost gently. If only they had all come out so easily.
Once, Ramsay had pulled out two of his teeth, but the third and fourth had vexed him, so he smashed them to splinters. Even with them weeks gone, phantom agony twisted in his jaw.
He looked down and found a woman looking at him. Her lips were blue, her mouth gaping, and her frosty eyes wide in shock. Pink ice covered her belly, and her fingers were frozen into claws. Wind had begun to gather at the base of the Wall, and her dark hair fluttered like the wing of a raven.
Theon turned back to his sister. “Where is Dagmer?” he asked. The Cleftjaw’s teeth had been smashed by an axe as a boy, and those that were left were rotten. Theon wondered if they still troubled him. He could not imagine a day when he would not ache.
“Still holding Torrhen’s Square,” Asha answered, pulling out a canine and slipping it into her pocket. “I had thought to go to him after Deepwood Motte, but King Stannis was quicker.”
Torrhen’s Square had been his notion, Theon remembered. Dagmer and his ironborn had been defeated there once, but the Cleftjaw must have returned. He smiled at the thought.
“A pity you had no wildfire,” Theon replied, rubbing his wind-chapped hands together. “I hear that served the Lannisters well.”
Asha made a soft noise, almost a laugh, and continued her work. It took her nearly an hour to make a full set. By then, his hands were blue with cold and the corpses had begun to thaw.
The path back to Castle Black was slow and plodding, but Theon imagined the teeth in Asha’s pockets clinking together like coins.
As they entered the common hall, the sudden warmth made his fingers ache. Fool, he thought viciously. His hands throbbed so terribly that it took everything in him not to scream.
Asha gave him a look, and grabbed hold of his hand to inspect his remaining fingers. “Gods be damned, Theon, were the ones the bastard took not sufficient?” she hissed.
“It was not my intent to yield them, my lady,” Theon replied, yanking his hands away.
By then, they had reached their table, and found Jeyne and Tris Botley waiting.
“Your lord husband?” Theon inquired under his breath as Tris leapt to his feet.
Asha made a sound, equal parts amused and despairing. “And your lady wife,” she replied, as Jeyne took him gently by the arm.
That might have stung, but Theon was too weary, and too hungry, to argue. They lingered in the common hall most of the day, joined at lunch by Qarl the Maid and Alysane Mormont. Samwell had taken Jeyne to the library the day before, and she read aloud from one of the crumbling tomes in a soft, quavering voice.
Distantly, Theon remembered visiting Ten Towers’ library as a boy. The room smelled of beeswax candles and old dry parchment, and the books were stacked so high that he imagined himself lost in some great maze. Lady Alannys would read him stories of valor and adventure and love until her voice was hoarse, her eyes soft and warm. Brown, he realized suddenly. Her eyes were brown.
Even after dinner had been served and the cook shooed them out of the hall, they did not rush to return to their chilly cells and bedchambers. They piled into Theon’s room behind the armory, though Asha complained loudly of the sparse cushions and thin furs.
She had taken to lounging beside Qarl the Maid, idly braiding a section of his sandy blond hair. Tris stoked the hearth and pretended he could not see them.
Alysane had fallen asleep against the foot of his bed, having dragged the brazier close to keep her and Jeyne warm. The Mormont had not bothered to change out of her hauberk, but she seemed to sleep as well in ringmail as anyone else might in fur. Jeyne was still awake, and her eyes were luminous in the firelight. She did not smile, but nor did she weep.
After a time, the door creaked open. Samwell crept in nervously, cradling something gently in his hands. Theon was not surprised to see Ghost slip in behind him. The direwolf was fond of Sam, and with Jon oft busy, he was left to prowl the castle alone.
“Here,” Samwell said, near a whisper, as he handed Theon his prize—a jumbled row of teeth. The boy had drilled careful holes through each tooth and strung them together with thin silver wire. It looked almost elegant, though Ghost sniffed at it dubiously.
However, fitting the teeth in was an ordeal, especially once Asha crept close to instruct and ridicule them. Samwell’s fumbling increased tenfold, and finally Theon had to drive her away with a feeble kick.
Even worse, Jon Snow entered the room halfway through the trial, and lingered on the threshold. He said nothing, but Theon could feel his eyes.
Jeyne had taken his hand, and she squeezed it gently as Samwell fixed the wire around his molars. She smiled at him, sweet and sad. Her nose must have scabbed over, but she still would not remove her bandage. That wound could not be so easily mended.
Once the teeth were finally fit in place, Theon ran his tongue over them, the real and false alike.
“Give us a grin now,” Asha goaded, something akin to joy in her voice. “Don’t make me beg, Theon.”
Jeyne’s eyes were soft and expectant, Ghost’s red and intent. Even Jon Snow watched him, face unreadable, as he stroked his direwolf’s thick white fur.
Theon smiled, and it did not hurt.