[Kill The Boy] Chapter 71: The Three Wolves (Patreon)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all rights for character, plots and settings belong to GRRM. I have no ownership.

A/N: A late upload but I hope you enjoy!

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Year 300 AC

Castle Black, The Wall

The cloud thinned, and the Wall filled half the world as the ice ran east and west until grey distance swallowed the ends.

"You're too close to the edge, again." Aemon said, though the words were lost to the wind.

"But I want to see the world below!" Arya screamed, her voice was a thread against the roar. He felt her shift, the press of her small body against the scales of his hand and the three sword hilts clattered together as he adjusted a wing.

Aemon banked, a slow tilt that made the wind scream.

"So that's the Wall," she gasped. "It's smaller than I expected."

"That is because you are looking down at it from the sky."

Castle Black appeared under him, and the first shock was how crowded it looked. From above the old bones of the place were still there, timber and stone pressed against the base of the Wall, the Lord Commander's Tower, the Shield Hall, the broken keeps. But tents had spread across the yards and beyond the old timber palisade like a rash, cookfires trailing thin grey lines into the air. Picket lines ran in crooked rows where horses and garrons stood nose to tail. Black cloaks moved between the tents, but so did men in Northern grey and brown, and he caught the dull glint of plate where a column of Vale knights crossed the training yard in formation. Free Folk had made a camp of their own against the eastern wall, hides and timber lean-tos crowded together. The old buildings he remembered — the yards where he had bled and learned and shouted boys into men or into something near enough to serve — sat buried under a garrison that had outgrown them.

When he had first come here as a boy, the sight had insulted him. No curtain walls. No strong keep. He had expected a fortress out of old songs and found a penal camp at the end of the world. Donal Noye had taken one look at him and called him what he was, a pampered lordling sulking because the world had not bothered to dress itself for his disappointment. Jon Snow had wanted Winterfell back.

Now that he had experienced the Red Keep and its whispering galleries, southron lords measuring one another through smiles and courtly lies, Castle Black looked like the last plain-spoken place in Westeros. Yet, it had also killed him.

He banked once above the yard and he noticed something wrong with the Wall. The color was wrong with some sections had gone cloudy, as if milk had been poured through the blue. Other places wore streaks and shapes that did not belong there. The Wall looked sick. That was the only word for it.

The yard jolted under his weight as he came down. Snow slid from a roof in a loose white sheet. A Northman in a mud-spattered cloak shoved back from a supply cart, swearing. Two Vale knights stumbled clear of the shadow his wings threw across the snow, one grabbing the other's arm. A Free Folk woman near the well stood with her arms folded, watching him with the look of someone deciding whether to be impressed or angry. Black brothers spilled from doorways and halted where they stood.

He lowered one foreclaw and spread the talons.

Arya climbed down by practice now, boots finding the ridges between black scales as if she had done it all her life. The bundle under her arm and the swords at her back threw her off on the last step. She lurched forward but Aemon had already moved before she hit the ground, the curved tip of one talon steadying her. She planted her feet, regained herself, and turned to him to give him a thumbs up.

He gave her a small nudge with the side of that same claw, to make her move back more, and drew the fire inward.

Violet ran over scale and wing and the world rushed down. He hit one knee in slush and churned mud, naked, with steam rolling off him in pale streamers. Arya had the cloak in his hands before the last flare died. She threw breeches next, then boots, then the rest briskly with disgust. He couldn't blame her, as seeing her brother with no clothes every time he transforms could get annoying fast.

When he had the boots laced, Arya passed him Blackfyre hilt-first. He buckled the belt at his hip and the Valyrian steel caught what grey light there was, the ripple in the blade running like oil on dark water.

The creak of old timber carried across the yard, then a voice cut across it.

"Jon," Edd said, walking towards them. "I hope you've brought food. Even with all the new supplies we have been getting, we can't feed a dragon."

"I'll try not to eat the horses."

Edd clasped his hand. Aemon pulled him in, brief and hard, one clap across the back before letting go. Edd looked faintly alarmed, as if Jon Snow had done something worse than come back from the dead.

Edd grimaced. "The south's already changed you."

"Not as much as you think." Aemon adjusted the cloak at his throat, the wool still damp from the mud.

Edd looked at her, then back at Jon. His long face settled into something even more mournful than usual.

"Another Stark," he said. "One of you was enough to get me starved on a frozen hill. I suppose the gods felt I hadn't suffered enough."

"I fight my own battles," Arya said, grinning. "You're funnier than I imagined, though. He was right to call you a p--"

Aemon flicked her ear. She flinched, glared at him, and remembered her courtesies. "I'm Arya Stark. Thank you for helping my brother."

"A terrible mistake that," Edd said, looking thoroughly miserable about it. "If I'd stabbed him instead, they might have given me a warm cell. Instead he made me commander. The loyal are always punished with more work."

"You love the work, Edd."

"I love breathing, Your Grace." Edd glanced at him meaningfully. "Though even that's becoming a chore in this air. Still, it's an honor, Lady Arya. I'd offer a hot meal, but I don't know what royalty eats nowadays. So Jon, do I call you Aemon or Your Grace now?"

"Jon will do. And I learned it late, Edd."

Edd considered that. "At least you're not a bastard."

That nearly won a laugh from him. It came out as a breath through his nose while he fastened Blackfyre's scabbard tighter against his leg.

The yard had not stopped moving since he landed. Leathers was drilling Free Folk near the training ground, shouting corrections in a voice that carried across the yard. Rory stood by the gate with his arms crossed, watching the sky where Aemon had come down as though he expected a second dragon.

A stocky man with a stonemason's build crossed toward them. Aemon met him halfway.

"Jon."

"Halder."

They gripped forearms, brief and hard, and Halder's mouth twitched once before he moved on. He had always been better with his hands than his words.

Iron Emmett came from the armory. His eyes went to Aemon's face, then dropped to the sword belt, and Aemon saw the man's stride check for half a step when he caught the ripple of Valyrian steel.

"Your Grace."

"Emmett."

Emmett's gaze came back up. He said nothing about the sword, but his jaw worked once before he fell into step beside them.

"How many?" Aemon asked.

"Near three thousand bodies," Emmett said, "under roofs not built for half that. Four chains of command. The Northmen answer to me because Lord Manderly told them to. The Vale knights answer to a ser whose name I can never remember because he has three of them. The Free Folk answer to Leathers, mostly, when they feel like answering to anyone. And the Watch answers to Edd."

"So four armies sharing one latrine," Aemon said.

"Fifteen latrines," Edd corrected. "I had more dug. It was the first order I gave as Lord Commander and I stand by it."

Emmett continued as if Edd had not spoken. "Iron Bank supplies have been arriving. Grain, salt beef, hard cheese. We are not starving but we are overcrowded, freezing, and managing friction between men who were killing each other a year ago."

"I am sure it hasn't been an easy adjustment so… how bad?"

"Two brawls last week. One stabbing, though the man lived. I rotate the duty schedules so no two groups share a watch alone." Emmett shrugged. "It holds. Barely."

Then the set of Edd's face changed, and the gallows humor drained out of it like water through a cracked cup.

"There is another bigger problem we all share. The Wall is killing us, Jon."

Aemon looked at him.

"Ice sheets," Edd said. "Shedding off the face. Small ones at first, the size of doors. We lost shutters, broke a cart. Then they started coming bigger." He stopped walking. "A few days ago a section came loose near the old winch tower. Twelve feet across, give or take. Came down on a barracks roof. Crushed it flat." He worked his jaw. "Brother named Ollo was asleep inside. We dug him out in the morning. Most of him."

Wind crossed the yard and banged a loose shutter against timber.

"Yesterday," Emmett said, "a sheet near the stables killed a Northern soldier and the garron he was saddling. Both dead before anyone reached them."

Aemon said nothing for a moment. He had known the Wall was failing. Bran had told him months, not years. He had not known it was already falling on men in their beds.

"We will discuss that shortly," he said. "First, I need to head to Maester Aemon's quarters."

Edd nodded.

They were crossing toward the woodpile on the far side of the yard when Aemon saw him.

A figure in new-sewn black, carrying an armload of split logs. Too thin, shoulders caved in around the weight. The face was older than it should have been, hollowed out and raw from wind and cold, but Aemon knew it.

Theon Greyjoy saw him at the same moment. The logs shifted in his arms and he flinched — his whole body flinched, a jerk backward like a dog expecting a boot. Then he stopped himself. Set the wood down in a careful stack and straightened.

Arya noticed him too and started to move in haste.

She drew Needle and took one step but Aemon caught her around the waist and hauled her back before she reached him.

"He took the black," Aemon said.

"He killed Maester Luwin." Her voice was thin and shaking. "He betrayed Robb."

"I know Arya and he is serving for his crimes."Aemon said. "The Watch has him now."

She sheathed Needle by force, shoving it home with a show of grace in it.

Theon held Aemon's gaze for a few breaths. Shame in it, and fear, and something stubborn underneath that had survived Ramsay Bolton and the Wall both. Aemon felt the old hatred rise and gutter but he kept walking. Arya decided to stay in the yard, watching the spearwives drill.

Maester Aemon's chambers were in the wooden keep beneath the rookery, up a stair that groaned with every step.

He took the stairs alone. Inside, the old Maester's room still had the smell of candle wax and dust, and under it the sour tang of bird musk from the rookery overhead and Aemon felt regret for a moment. He wished he could have talked to his very great Uncle about their shared heritage but alas, it was not meant to be.

He crossed to the east wall, knelt, and found the board where Bran said it would be. Worked it loose with his fingers and reached into the gap. Oiled leather met his hand.

He drew the bundle out and unwrapped it on the floor. Slimmer than Longclaw, narrower in the blade, built for speed. Dark Sister rippled dark grey running to black in the folds. Bloodraven's sword, wrapped in leather by a blind maester who would never swing it, tucked beneath a floorboard at the edge of the world.

The grip sat light in his hand. A sword for a fighter who struck fast and precisely. He wrapped it again and carried it down.

Before he found Iron Emmett by the armory, checking a rack of spears with the focused irritation of a man who had been given poor steel and told to make it work.

"Walk with me."

Emmett fell in beside him without question. They crossed the yard in silence until they were clear of the nearest group of men.

"You are the best sword at the Wall," Aemon said. "I do not need a sword when I have fire but in this war, I need the best warriors to carry the best weapons."

He held out the wrapped bundle. Emmett took it, frowning, and pulled back the leather. His hand went still on the hilt.

The steel caught the light and Emmett's face did something Aemon had never seen it do. The hard jaw loosened. He drew the blade halfway and the ripple ran down the metal, dark and bright at once.

"She is lighter than she looks," Emmett said.

"And easier to swing," Aemon met his eyes. "Defend the realm with her."

Emmett slid the blade home. He looked at Aemon for a long moment, then wrapped the leather back over the steel with careful hands.

"I will."

Aemon eventually found Edd by the Lord Commander's Tower. Edd was already pouring mead in a cup when Aemon ducked into the Lord Commander's quarters. A horn cup, half-full of dark ale, slid across the table toward him.

"So the South," Edd said. It wasn't a question. He looked Aemon up and down, his gaze lingering on the scars at his throat. "Do they understand, or are they still playing their little game with the thorny chair?"

Aemon took the cup. "They understand they have no other choice but to follow my orders."

"I wish I was there to see them squirm." Edd settled onto a stool that groaned under his weight. "Anything of note happen?"

"I faced a kraken." Aemon drank again. "And I met my aunt, Daenerys Targaryen."

Edd's eyebrows rose. They were the only expressive part of his face. "The dragon queen. With your three sibling?" Aemon almost choked on his drink. "So. Is she as beautiful as the songs say?"

Aemon looked at him. He felt the weight of the question, its staggering, perfect irrelevance. He thought of violet eyes and silver hair and the fire behind her gaze.

"Yes," he said, his voice softer than he intended. "She is."

A slow grin spread across Edd's gaunt face.

Aemon knew this was the time to change the conversation to why he came up here. "Edd, how much can you move in a day?"

Edd looked at him. "Move where?"

He had always known this order was coming. Bran had told him months, not years, and the Great Evacuation was already emptying the North south of the Neck. This garrison was always temporary, a holding force, men buying time.

"South. Moat Cailin."

Edd opened his mouth, closed it, and for the first time since Aemon had landed, had no ready answer.

"Castle Black is no longer defensible," Aemon said. "The dead will come through the Wall. The ice will come down on the men beneath it. Three thousand people sleeping under a roof that will collapse on them." He turned to look down the window. "Salvage the food, the records, the tools, every weapon worth carrying. Burn what you cannot carry and cannot leave useful. Take every man south to Moat Cailin. Watch, Northmen, Vale knights, Free Folk. All of it."

Edd stared at him.

"You are ordering me to abandon Castle Black."

"Yes. I will not lose three thousand men to falling ice because the realm likes its symbols intact."

Edd was quiet for a long time. Then the practical man took over, as Aemon knew he would. Questions came one after another. What to burn. What to carry. How fast. Send the raven to warn all the other manned castles.

Edd looked at the Wall. Looked at the yard. Looked at the shored-up roof with its fresh timber braces and the crack running through the beam beneath them.

"A practical apocalypse," he said.

"One I intend to see us survive."

He held out his forearm and Edd gripped it.

“Where are you going?” Edd asked.

“To deal with another of my siblings.”

“Right,” Edd said. He cleared his throat. “Well, I'm going to touch that so good luck.”

The ghost of a smile touched Aemon’s mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes.

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Eastwatch-By-The-Sea, The Wall

The click of cyvasse pieces kept time with the sea. Wind found every crack in Eastwatch's solar and sang through them in a thin note. Commander Pyke kept his board on a chest dragged close to the brazier, though the brazier did little save turn the room from raw cold to damp cold.

Bran slid his trebuchet across the painted squares and took an elephant.

Pyke stared down at the loss. "You cheat."

"You say that every game."

"That's because I lose every game."

"That's not my fault, Commander."

Leaf sat cross-legged on a stool beside the wall, watching the carved men and beasts with grave delight. She liked the dragons best. Her small brown hand had reached toward one earlier, then withdrawn when Pyke grunted at her. Meera stood near the window bench with her spear propped against her shoulder, close enough to the table that Bran could have touched her sleeve if he leaned. She had said little all game. He was glad of it, words would have made the waiting larger.

Below them Eastwatch carried on with its borrowed life. Men shouted in three accents and four tempers. Glendon Hewett's rough drillmaster bark rose from the yard, then the stamp of boots answered him. Northmen and black brothers shared the inner ward with Vale men who kept their armor too bright for the Wall, and free folk who treated every order as a fresh insult. Since Bran had come here with Meera, Hodor, Summer, Leaf, and sixty singers from the woods, the castle had grown used to strange company. Used to it was as close as Eastwatch ever came to be welcoming.

Pyke moved his dragon at last.

The trap was three turns ahead. He took a rabbleman instead and left the square open.

Pyke's eyes narrowed. "You left that lane on purpose."

"Maybe, maybe not. You won't know until you move there."

Pyke grunted, half sour, half amused. "And if I refuse?"

"Then you are prolonging the inevitable."

Leaf laughed at that, and Pyke gave her a look. She smiled wider.

Bran's gaze drifted to the shutters.

For a few breaths the board went pale and far away and just as fast when he came back, Pyke was still waiting.

Bran set down his heavy horse and took Pyke's catapult. "You keep placing your pieces where they can be taken."

"Most people would say I am playing defensively."

"Yes, but you sacrifice too much."

Pyke snorted. "A boy of eleven talks like he is eighty."

Leaf leaned closer to the board. "He plays like winter. Slow, then all at once."

Pyke rubbed a scar beside his nose and studied the board again. Bran had been winning from the start, though Pyke still believed one fierce charge could rescue any field. Men like Pyke always thought a hard enough shove would mend a bad board. Sometimes it did. More often it killed good pieces for pride.

Bran looked toward the shutters again.

Pyke followed Bran's glance to the eastern wall. "Waiting on weather?"

Bran took his dragon in hand and turned it once between thumb and forefinger. Black wood, wings half spread. "Something like that."

Pyke reached for his own dragon.

"Brace yourselves," Bran said.

Pyke frowned. "Brace for wh—"

The castle jumped.

The cyvasse board skidded. Pieces leapt and clattered across the chest and floor. Ink sloshed from a pot onto Pyke's ledger. Meera caught the table edge with one hand. Leaf sprang down from her stool in a single smooth motion, head turned toward the outer wall.

Bran's palm came down flat over his dragon before it could slide away.

Above them timber groaned. From the yard came shouts, then more shouts, then the hard running thunder of men who had forgotten dignity.

"My brother is here," Bran said.

Pyke was already on his feet. "If he cracks my gate, he better help mend it." He crossed to the door, yanked it open, then looked back once.

Bran stayed where he was. Leaf had gone still as carved wood, her large gold eyes fixed on the doorway. Some memory older than men lived in her people. Dragons had meant death before Valyria ever learned their names.

Meera looked out the window and made a strangled sound. A short, hitched intake of breath, not quite a gasp, more like the noise a person makes when the wind is punched out of them.

"That's... I still can't believe my eyes." Meera's voice was thin. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the window ledge. "The scale of it, it's terrifying."

Bran didn't look up from the cyvasse board. "Do not fear, he will shift back soon enough."

Meera let out a breath she'd been holding. "May the Old Gods preserve us."

Pyke's gaze moved from Bran to Meera and back again. Why are you still sitting, boy, when half the castle has run outside?

"He knows where to find me," Bran said.

Pyke gave a short nod and went out into the hall, already barking for men before the door had swung shut behind him.

The castle had turned inside out. Orders rang through the passage. A hatch slammed somewhere below. Men ran along the yard wall. Eastwatch had seen dragons once already and still had no better answer than noise.

Boots on stone came after a time. More than two sets and between them voices in the corridor, one deep, one quick, talking over each other in the old way. Under theirs came a quieter voice, roughened by wind and use, and one more presence keeping pace in silence.

The door slammed open.

Jon stopped at the doorway, scanning the whole room. When his eyes finally landed on Bran, he opened his mouth but his words were cut short as a smaller figure barged passed him. Arya shoved past him so hard his shoulder struck the doorframe and crossed the room in three quick strides. "You're walking!"

The words broke in the middle, and Bran didn't even realize he had stood up. Arya didn't hesitate and launched herself at him. Bran's arms came up late, but they came up anyway. Arya's cheek pressed into his shoulder. The room closed in for him.

"I missed you," she said again, the words muffled against him. "How can you walk again?"

"Magic," Bran answered. Arya pulled back and decided that wasn't enough and punched him on his arm, hard.

"Jon has told me about your correspondence. But you never reached out to me!"

"I wanted to, I really did. But you were needed in Kings Landing and I couldn't stop that."

"Hodor," said Hodor from the corner, his voice soft with wonder.

Arya turned her head. Her face changed all at once as she jumped to hug him. "Hodor, you're alive too!"

"Hodor," said Hodor warmly.

Summer’s nose pressed warm against Arya’s knuckles. Then the direwolf went still, ears lifting toward Jon. A slow, cautious approach. The wet snuff of breath over leather, fur brushing Jon’s knee but once Summer sniffed Jon, his tail started to wag.

Hodor crossed the room in two great strides. The floorboards groaned under his weight. Before Jon could speak, huge arms wrapped around him and lifted. Jon’s boots left the floor. Jon’s arms came up, returning the hold, his face pressed into the rough-spun shoulder.

“Good to see you too Hodor,” Jon said, his voice muffled. “And thank you.”

“Hodor,” Hodor rumbled, a sound like distant thunder in his chest. He set Jon down with surprising care.

Jon turned and looked at Meera who stood by the window, one hand gripping the stone sill.

“Lady Meera,” Jon said. “It is good to see you safe. Your father has been… anxious for your return.”

Meera’s eyes flickered to Bran, then back to Jon. “Your Grace.” The title felt stiff in the quiet room. “I am glad to know my father is in good health.” Her breath left her in a short hush. “He will be… devastated to learn my brother did not make it.”

Jon’s shoulders settled, a slow letting-down of weight. He looked at the floorboards between them. “I am sorry for your loss.” He met her eyes. “I cannot ever hope to repay you, or your brother, for protecting Bran. All you have to do is ask and I will make it happen.”

Meera’s nod was small, uncertain.

The silence held for a moment before Jon’s gaze moved past her, to the last figure in the room.

Leaf hadn’t moved. She watched them with eyes like polished amber, still as the root-threaded stones at her back.

Jon’s breath caught, just for a moment. “My lady…?”

“Leaf,” she said. Her voice was the rustle of dry leaves across flagstones, the scrape of bark. “I am called Leaf.”

Arya looked at Bran once, then at Meera, then back at the child of the forest. "You're very small."

Leaf's mouth curved. "You are too."

A short sound escaped Hodor that might have been a laugh if a giant had only one word to laugh with.

She tilted her head back to Jon, a slow, birdlike motion. “You carry the scent of old magic. And fire. The blood of the Dawn flows true in you, unlike your kin.”

Jon was at a loss for words and Commander Pyke coming in saved him. He turned to Pyke.

"Eastwatch needs to evacuate to Moat Cailin, starting today."

Pyke's scarred face gave Bran the closest thing it had to ease. "Good. I've been waiting for somebody with rank to say it out loud since the bay took that chunk of ice."

"I gave the same order at Castle Black eariler," Aemon said. "Carry what you can but do not worry about things, your lives are more important."

Pyke crossed to the chest with the scattered cyvasse pieces and planted both palms on it, already counting. "So we leave by ship and wagon both, then. Harbor first while the water still gives us room. The Wild— Free folk?"

"South with the rest," Aemon said.

Pyke gave a hard nod. "Aye."

Pyke had already taken up his ledger again, blotched with fresh ink from the castle's lurch. Pyke grunted. "I'll start making the preparations."

Then he was moving again, all business. He strode to the door and hauled it open.

"Hewett," he bellowed into the corridor. "Find Grenn. Find Pyp. Every hand lifts or freezes."

When the door shut, the room belonged to them.

Aemon crossed the room in three steps and pulled Bran against him without a word. Bran's face pressed into his brother's collarbone. The heat coming off Aemon's skin was the dragon's warmth yet it still felt like home.

Then Aemon pulled back, his hands settling on Bran's shoulders. His grey eyes moved over Bran's face and down to his legs, and what crossed his expression was not surprise. But seeing it was something else.

"You and I are going to talk," Aemon said. "And you are going to tell me why you kept so much from me."

"You already know." Bran heard his own voice come out in the greenseer's register, the one he could not always stop. "If it had gone wrong, half a million people would be ash."

"I know why you did it." Aemon's voice went lower, for Bran alone. "I am asking why you thought you had keep it from me."

"Because I know you, Jon." The old name came without thinking. "You would have tried to carry it. The blood price, the guilt, the knowledge of every death you could not stop. You would have put all of it on your own shoulders and flown south before the trap was set."

He leaned forward. The motion was stiff, his body still learning the legs Jojen's sacrifice had returned to him.

"Not everything is yours to carry."

“And what of Jaime, do you see a use for him? Alive?”

“We all bleed in this war. Some of us get to choose where the blood goes. His has a purpose, same as yours.”

“Alright,” he said. “I will chose to believe you for now, but no more secrets Bran.”

Bran felt the tension in his own shoulders ease, a fractional release of the weight that wasn’t his to carry. "I understand."

From the yard below, Pyke's voice cut through the shutters, barking men toward the quays. Aemon let go.

The room settled around them. Arya had not moved during the exchange, standing with her weight on her back foot, watching them both with a quiet intensity.

Meera moved then to cross the room and stopped near Arya, close enough to touch shoulders. Her spear shifted against her back as she settled her weight. "He talks about you. When he is here long enough to talk."

Arya's gaze sharpened. She had seen the drift during the hug, even if she had not named it yet. "Does he always… dissappear?"

"You saw it yourself. He sees too much."

Arya looked at Meera for a long moment. "How long have you been with him?"

"Since my brother and I met him in Winterfell," Meera said, looking as if she was somewhere else and Arya chose not to ask her to elaborate.

"Hodor," said Hodor from the corner, in case anyone had missed the point.

Aemon had gone to the window. He stood with one hand on the stone sill, looking east toward the Wall. From here the fractures showed in the blue, cloudy streaks and dark lines that had not been there a month ago. The wind sang through the cracks in the shutters and the brazier guttered.

"I had a dream," he said, still facing the glass. "I saw a Bran The Builder blow the horn, with sacrifices all around him. The Wall rose behind him but at the cost of his life. Using the Horn killed him."

Bran said nothing. He had wondered when Aemon would speak of it.

"And then another man picked up the piece that broke off." Aemon turned from the window. "He said, 'We only bought time.' He said, 'To end it, go deeper.'"

"So tell me what I am walking into," Aemon said. "Because I will not raise another Wall that lasts eight thousand years and cracks again while men forget why it was built."

"You will not have to," Bran said. "The Wall was the best Brandon could do alone. It was never meant to be the answer."

"Then what is?"

"The Horn." Bran picked up the cyvasse dragon from where it had fallen beside the chest. Black wood, wings half spread, still warm from his hand during the game. "You saw what it did at the Nightfort. That was one scale. There are others."

Arya's head came up. "What do you mean, other scales?"

"The Horn sings to ice. It raised the Wall by commanding ice into stone. But aimed differently, at a different volume, it can do more." He turned the piece between his fingers. "It can crack the Others' armor. Shatter their weapons. The binding spells that hold them together come apart when the Horn finds the right note."

Aemon's hand tightened on the stone sill. A fine crack ran through the frost beneath his grip. "Then why did Brandon build a Wall instead of ending them?"

"Because he did not have the power left and neither did the Prince," Leaf said.

She had not moved from her stool by the wall, but her gold eyes had left the scattered cyvasse board and found Aemon.

"Brandon the Builder was the strongest of the First Men. Stark blood, old and deep. The Horn drank his life to raise the ice, and when the Wall stood, he had nothing left." Her voice carried the scrape of dry bark, of leaves across flagstone. "He meant to turn the Horn on the cold ones. To unmake them. But a man with only ice in his blood cannot sustain what the Horn demands. The Wall took everything he had."

"So he died building a dam," Arya said, "when he wanted to kill the flood."

Leaf looked at her. "Yes."

"And the other man?" Aemon asked. "The Prince… the one who picked up the mouthpiece."

"The son of the Dawn." Leaf spoke the words with the weight of a name carried for millennia. "He fought beside Brandon. He carried fire in his blood, creation fire, the Amethyst Empress's gift to her line. Fire enough to sustain what ice demanded." She turned back to Aemon. "But he could not blow the Horn. He had no Stark blood, no claim on ice. They were two halves of a weapon that could never be wielded by one man."

Through the shutters, the Wall groaned. A long, low sound that made the brazier flame shiver.

"He took the mouthpiece south," Leaf continued. "To the place that would become Winterfell. He left it in the deepest chamber, below the roots, below the kings, in a place the weirwoods cannot reach. He left it for whoever came after him with both bloodlines." Her gaze held Aemon's. "My people have waited eight thousand years for that man. The blood of the Dawn flows true in you. It does not flow in your kin with the silver-haired queen, or the boy who calls himself Aegon. Only in you."

Arya looked from Leaf to Aemon. "So the Horn kills Jon too. Is that what you are telling us?"

"No." Bran spoke before Leaf could. "The Horn killed Brandon because he had only ice. No fire to replenish what the Horn drank. Aemon carries both." He set the cyvasse dragon down on the chest. "The Stark blood gives you the right to blow it. The dragon blood gives you fire enough to survive the aftermath."

"You sound very sure," Aemon said.

"I am sure of the bloodline. I am sure of what I can trace through the trees." Bran held his gaze. "The deep crypts are older than the weirwoods can reach. I can sense the dark place, but I cannot look into it. Whatever else the son of the Dawn left down there, I have not seen it."

"So you are sending me into a place you cannot see, to find something you cannot name, based on a theory you cannot prove."

"Yes."

Arya said something foul under her breath.

"The mouthpiece is down there," Bran said. "The Horn needs both pieces."

"And all I have to do is blow it at the Night King surrounded by ice dragons and white walkers."

"At the ice inside him. At the binding spells that hold him together." Bran paused. "But not alone. The Horn needs three forces to end him, not one."

"Three," Aemon said.

"The Horn cracks him open. I anchor him through the weirwood net so he cannot flee or shield himself. And your fire erases what the Horn and the anchor expose." Bran watched his brother's face. "Brandon had only one force. You will have all three."

The yard noise filled the quiet that fell upon the room.

"What does the anchor cost you?" Aemon pointedly asked.

The greenseer had an answer for that. The brother did not.

Bran looked at the floor. "I can handle it."

Arya kicked his boot. Not hard, but enough to jar him back from wherever he had started to drift. He blinked and found her standing over him.

"Sixty singers can push me farther through the trees than I can go alone," Bran said. "Brynden showed me. The Others can be struck through memory. Human memory. Flood them with enough life, enough hunger, enough heat, and they break."

"And if that's not enough to stop the White Walkers?" Arya asked.

Bran had no answer fit for her.

Leaf spoke into the gap. "The singers will carry the weight with him. That is why we came south. That is why we left the caves." She looked at Bran. "He will not do it alone."

Aemon pushed off the window sill and crossed the room. He stopped in front of Bran and set a hand on his shoulder.

"I want you alive after this," Aemon said.

"I want you alive too."

"I just got my family back after thinking I would never see any of you again," Arya looked between both of them. "I want both of you alive."

Aemon held his shoulder a breath longer. Then he let go. "Can you guide me once we reach the crypts?"

"I can take you as far as the door. After that, I go blind."

"Then we move," Aemon said.

He went for the door. Leaf rose from her stool and followed without a word, already turning toward the postern and the singers who waited below. Hodor lumbered after, with Meera following. Summer padded out, close to Arya's heels.

Arya started for the door, then stopped. She caught Bran's sleeve.

"Mother… did you speak with her?" she said quietly.

Bran met her gaze. "…Yes"

She took that in. "…Did she suffer?"

"No, she was already gone by then. She felt not pain."

Arya took his hand for a moment and exhaled. After a few seconds, she let go.

"Do not do it while I sleep."

"And hear you snore? I have better things to do."

Arya slapped his arm and shoved past him.

Bran, grinning for the first time, followed.

-----------------------------------------------------

The yard had turned itself inside out. Barrels rolled toward the harbor in pairs. Bundles of furs vanished into carts. Up on ladders, men tore iron from hinges and lanterns from posts. Pyke stood at the center of it with a broken-spined ledger in one hand and a voice that cut through everything.

"Grain on the first two wagons. Records dry and sealed. If I find salted cod under a pile of chamber pots, I will drown the lot of you in it."

Leaf stood near the postern with the singers gathered close around her. The yard gave them wide berth without being told.

He crossed to them while Meera walked to his side without a word. Her hand brushed his arm once as they walked. Hodor followed with Bran's cloak over one huge arm and a pack slung across his back. Summer slipped ahead through the press of legs, white-grey fur dusted with blown snow.

"You are going to meet more people," Bran told Leaf. "Are you ready for their distrust?"

Her large eyes searched his face. "The grudges between men and the Children are long past us."

"I wish it were true," Bran said. "But there are monsters amongst men as well. Listen to Jon, and stay close to him."

One slow nod. She turned to the others.

Aemon was outside the postern already, stripping off cloak and belt while Arya stood guard over the pile with abhorrence.

"Formidable, that," Pyp said. He was leaning against a post, arms crossed. "The posture of a king disrobing. Very regal. Should I fetch a poet? Or perhaps a herald to announce the royal shoulders?"

"Shut up, Pyp," Grenn grunted, not turning. He was scanning the yard as if expecting an assassination attempt on Jon's bare chest. "Unless you want to become Jon's snack for the flight."

"Right," Pyp said, all the humor gone. He pushed off the post. "I'll go help Pyke. Grenn, stop him from getting frostbite on anything important. That's an order from all the noble ladies of the realm that fancy themselves a Queen."

"Don't let him get to you," Grenn muttered, holding it open. "It's just… strange. For us."

"It's strange for me too," Jon said, his voice muffled as he pull of his shirt and met Grenn's eyes. "Thank you."

Grenn just nodded. Jon took to the field and transformed.

Bran stopped long enough to watch violet fire take his brother.

The yard flinched. Flame climbed fast and the man went away inside it. The dragon filled the ground beyond the wall.

"Move," Pyke bellowed behind Bran. "If you have time to stare, you have time to lift."

Leaf turned to the singers and they moved at once. Children were easy to load because they were light. Harder because there were sixty of them, and every man in the yard who saw them climbing the dragon's black forelimb looked as though he had swallowed something he could not spit out.

Hodor knelt by the lowered foreclaw. "Hodor."

"I know," Bran said.

Hodor lifted him under the arms and set him against the warm black ridge above the dragon's wrist as if he weighed no more than a sack of grain. Meera came after, spear and bundle on her back. Her hand pressed flat against his back once, checking his seat. Summer bounded up and circled twice before settling. The singers climbed in a brown stream, filling spaces between scale ridges and the leather straps Arya had lashed in place on earlier flights.

Leaf paused at the base. Her small hand rested on one black scale for half a breath. Then she went up.

Pyke never stopped working. He heaved a crate onto a wagon, pointed two men toward the quay, cursed a third for carrying uncoiled rope. When Bran looked back one last time, the commander had already turned from the dragon to deal with a broken axle.

Arya climbed last, Aemon's clothes lashed in a bundle, both swords at her back. She settled near Bran, one hand buried in a strap, the other on Widow's Wail's pommel. "We are finally returning home, together. Will it feel the same?"

"No, it will never be the same." Bran replied.