[Look To The Stars] Chapter 64: The Stranger's Face (Patreon)

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

A/N: Well I am looking forward to the reactions from this one :D Enjoy!

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Year 299 AC/8 ABY

The Green Fork, The Riverlands

Gold lions stitched into Tywin Lannister's captured pavilion held that last light in their manes and claws, so the whole tent looked dressed for a lord who had lost it by noon.

Luke paused inside the flap long enough to scan the room.

Ned Stark stood at the head of the table because no other place would do for him. His bandaged forearm rested beside a map weight shaped like a lion's head, and the fingers of his good hand curled over the table edge with more force than the wood deserved. Robb sat to Ned's right and kept one knee angled toward Jon without seeming to, brother before bannerman.

Jon had taken a plain chair and no higher seat, which told the room more than a crown would have. Storm's End had burned away the last of the boy who expected the room to decide his worth for him. Daenerys sat straight-backed across from them, one hand on the arm of her chair. The air around her shimmered and Luke registered the Force within her, like a continuous ignition, banked but hungry.

Leia had chosen a place with a view of Ned, the entrance, and Daenerys in the same turn of the head. The twins within her moved with unusual vigor, two small lives stirring against the press of so many strong presences under one roof. Han and her are going have their hands full once they are born.

At the far side sat Olenna Tyrell, sunk deep into cushions that did nothing to soften her. Prince Oberyn, on the other hand, leaned back with one elbow hooked over his chair as if he had wandered into an evening entertainment. The surface never fooled Luke for long. Under it lived a restless hunger so old it had grown roots.

The northern side of the tent are still digesting the shock. Greatjon Umber’s seemed restless on his stool, and Maege Mormont chose to remain standing with the coiled stillness of a huntress. Around Ned’s other captains and the mountain clan chiefs, whose eyes tracked between Jon, Ned, and Daenerys in a silent relay. The unspoken question was a giant rancor between them.

Finally at Daenerys's shoulder, a peculiarity tugged at his sense. A Northern knight stood with one hand on his sword and the Force went thin around him in a way Luke inherently disliked. What disturbed him the most was it was a small drag in the pattern that brushed some half-buried memory of Dathomir. But this was not the time to focus on it so he filed the discomfort and moved on.

Luke moved to the empty place left for him.

For a moment it felt almost ordinary. Silk or durasteel, a war council always carried the same pause before the report that changed every plan in the room. The names changed. The banners changed. The part where people looked to him for the context of the disaster remained the same.

Ned broke the silence first.

"Before we being, I must confess to most of my lords that I have deceived them," he said.

That seemed to instantly get every attention on Ned.

“I did not lie about the enemy,” Ned admitted. “The Lannister are a threat. The war we face is just. But… what I concealed was I had harbored another Targaryen long before Princess Daenerys.”

He paused.

“...My nephew that I raised as my son.”

Every Northern eye slid to Jon. Luke watched the shift happen, a coordinated movement like a flock of birds changing direction. Jon stood straighter, but his jaw tightened, a small tell. Luke felt a flicker of grim amusement. The boy could face down a shadow assassin, but forty sets of familiar Northern eyes judging him still found the chink.

As the murmuring began, Howland Reed's voice cut through it all.

“Daemon,” Howland’s gaze didn’t waver from Jon. “I have longed to call you that. Your mother was a dear friend of mine, and if you wish to learn all I know of her, all you have to do is ask.”

Luke watched Jon as his shoulders had locked and took a hard sallow. His eyes were fixed on the Crannogman, seeing something past him, perhaps a ghost of a woman with a long face and a wild spirit. He gave a single, short nod.

The Greatjon’s laugh was a rough, startled sound. “A dragon under all that wolf fur. The boy just arrived and already bonded with one of the dragons!”

Maege Mormont’s eyes appraised Jon, her weathered face unreadable. “That's because he's Lady Lyanna's son,” she said, her voice low and certain. “A dragon would have only been a challenge to overcome.”

Questions erupted. They overlapped, a rising tide of sound.

“Does the Dragon Queen know?”

“Why keep it a secret?”

"Because Robert was King fool!"

Ned raised a hand. The motion was slight, but the command in it was absolute. The noise died, not to silence, but to a low, seething quiet.

“I did what I did to protect my nephew,” Ned said, his eyes moving across each face in turn. “I will not apologize for this deception, even when I feel regret for the lies.”

Olenna waved a withered, dismissive hand, slicing right through Ned's statement. "Nor should he apologize," she said, her voice dry as old parchment. Her eyes, small and bright as a raven's, fixed on Ned. "You do what you must to protect your own. That is the beginning and end of duty."

A low murmur rippled through the gathered lords in agreement.

Greatjon grunted. "We understand Ned, no need to explain."

Jon said nothing. His eyes went to Daenerys, and Luke understood she had played her part to protect him too.

She rose before anyone asked her to. The room followed that motion whether it meant to or not.

"I did not name my nephew," she said. "Becuase Daemon was in the South without an army. If the truth was revealed early, assassins would be the least of his worries."

Daenerys settled back into her chair. She had let go of the decoy's place without grief because she had chosen it in the first place. Luke felt the room adjusting around that. She had stepped aside from one role and kept every ounce of her standing.

Jon’s gaze found Daenerys across the map-strewn table. “You kept my name safe by becoming a shield,” he said.

Daenerys inclined her head, a faint warmth touching her violet eyes. “A shield is meant to be used, nephew.”

"Thank you."

Olenna’s dry voice cut in. “How touching. Now, if the mutual admiration is finished, we have a realm to discuss.”

Ned turned at last toward Luke, as he saw the faintest easing in Ned's shoulders.

"Now," he said, "I believe Luke has much to speak to us about."

Luke drew a breath and laid his metal hand flat on Tywin Lannister's map of the realm. “I understand the shock many of you feel,” he said. “But you have to come to accept that you are not alone in this universe. There are more inhabited worlds out there than any lord here could ride across in ten lifetimes, and it is common for people to travel between them in ships just like the Falcon.”

He lifted his metal hand from Tywin’s map and turned two fingers toward the entrance. R2-D2 rolled in under the table edge, chirping to himself, with C-3PO following in anxious dignity and gathering his gold robes clear of a muddy peg.

Greatjon Umber rose before the first blue lights had finished climbing out of the little astromech. One moment Tywin’s maps covered the table and the next, blue lights floated over river lines and castle marks, then widened and widened again until the whole tent roof held a turning field of stars.

Several lords craned flinched backwards. Oberyn on the other hand was leaning in to the lights.

Luke kept his voice even. “My home lies among those stars. The Falcon crosses that distance faster than any mode of travel available to the people of this planet, and yes that includes dragons. Out there, whole governments rule thousands of worlds. But it's not much different from Westeros as some protect and some conquer.”

C-3PO folded his hands over his middle. “To provide a modest quantitative framework, a preindustrial feudal polity subjected to direct Imperial annexation retains, at best, a three-point-two percent chance of organized survival past the opening military phase. Subsequent cultural degradation would, of course, increase dramatically under labor extraction, resource seizure, and punitive occupation. The social dislocation alone would likely prove...”

Blank faces met him. The words slid past half the room. The tone reached all of it.

“Speak plainly,” Rickard Karstark growled.

Han leaned against a tent pole and cut across the droid. “Short version. Big Empire remains want to take over weak planets. And at a certain point, they will come knocking. But I think we have bigger problems in this plant for now.”

Oberyn Martell shifted forward, all laziness gone from him. “And if these conquerors learn that this world breeds dragons, the dead walk freely, and we have none of your… weapons?”

“They come with chains," Han replied. “Then officers, miners, shipwrights, and men who know how to turn every rare thing into a weapon. And the dead will be a foregone conclusion with orbital strikes… weapons firing from the sky.”

Luke let the star map turn once more overhead. “Han is right about the order of threats. I tell you this part because you deserve the full truth about what exists in the sky above your heads. I also tell you because distance gives poor comfort. If this world is ever found by the wrong people, its isolation will protect it for about as long as a door protects a room already on fire.”

Luke lowered his hand, and the stars collapsed into R2’s dome. Crimson canvas returned. Candle flames looked smaller after a galaxy.

“But we need to address the biggest threat, the threat that is far closer to home,” he said. “The old protections woven through the Wall are failing and before long, the Wall is going to fall. The Long Night is inevitable."

Most of what Luke said next was not new to everyone in the tent. Jon, Robb, Leia, Han, Olenna, Oberyn, and the others who had stood in the Reach council had already heard the shape of it. He gave the North the hard version all the same: fire and dragonglass killed the dead, the White Walkers bound them to a greater will, and the Wall was failing faster than any honest man should call acceptable.

Robb added only one thing. “There is one relief in all of this,” he said. “Kill the right one, and the dead around it lose purpose.”

Luke let that settle for a breath, then looked to the flap. “If words still sound like a tale,” he said, “I brought proof.”

Luke nodded toward the flap. A Stark guard moved at once. Canvas rustled, boots thudded outside, and then Chewbacca ducked into the pavilion with a rectangular cargo frame braced in his arms. Two northmen followed at the rear, hands on the metal more from stubbornness than need. A heavy lid of bars and plates enclosed the thing inside. Frost clung to parts of the mechanism where the restraint field had leeched heat into the metal.

The smell reached the room first, grave rot and wet wool left too long in a ditch.

When Chewie set the frame on the ground, the dead man woke to movement and slammed itself against the bars. The Northern lords were spooked but they held their grounds. Daenerys just looked on in disbelief. Ned must have told Daenerys the tale of his own encounter with the dead. But seeing it in person… had to be eye opening.

At her shoulder the northern knight in Mormont colors shifted his stance, but seemed… expectant? Strange.

Daenerys rose halfway from her chair, then settled her weight again. "Are there not people north of the wall?" she said.

Luke saw the glance pass between the Stark brothers. Robb straightened, the leather of his armor creaking.

“There were people north of the Wall,” Robb said. “We have come to an agreement with the Watch and given the Free Folk safe passage south.”

The reaction was a roar. Umber slammed his fist on the table, making the cups jump. “You let those savages past the Wall? You invite the wolf into the sheepfold, boy!”

Another lord, a Flint or a Norrey, spat on the rushes. “They burn our farms! Steal our women!”

“They will die if they stay,” Robb said, his jaw set. “All of them. Men, women, children. Then they stand back up, and they come south anyway, with blue eyes and a hunger for the living.”

Jon’s voice cut through the clamor, quiet but edged. “He’s right. A corpse is a corpse, whether it carries a Northern banner or a sealskin cloak. We need every sword that can still hold steel.”

“And every mouth that needs feeding?” a lord countered.

“They hunt, they fish,” Robb shot back. “And they can be taught to farm. They have agreed to follow Northern rules south of the Wall. They are a shield, not a burden.”

Ned Stark let the argument burn for a while. Finally, he let out a breath, a slow sigh that seemed to take the heat from the room.

“If they stay north, they die,” Ned said, his voice flat. “If they die, the enemy grows stronger. We will not turn away living allies to face a dead foe.” He looked at Robb, a single, firm nod. “Your decision stands.”

The Northern lords simmered, but Ned’s word was iron. The argument died, not resolved, but smothered under his authority.

“The Lannisters,” Jon said, his voice cut through the low murmur of the pavilion. “We end this quickly. We have the numbers to make it quick.”

“We have a coalition,” he continued, his gaze moving from face to face. “The North, the Riverlands, the Stormlords, the Reach and Dorne.” His eyes found Prince Oberyn, then slid to the Queen of Thorns. “We have the means to ensure the Lannisters never hold power again. It's time to use the means we have available to hasten their downfall so we can focus on what truly matters.”

A sly, deliberate movement drew his eye. Oberyn Martell, lounging against a tent pole, gave a slow, serpentine nod. “My agreement stands, Snow. As long as the lions lose.” His teeth glinted in the low light. “I’ve sent word to Doran. The spears are gathering at the Boneway. They march at your word.” A pause, the slyness deepening. “Or at the word of whoever wears the crown.”

The word crown brought back a jolt of awareness.

Olenna Tyrell found the perfect opening with that. “My armies are already near enough to smell the smoke from King’s Landing.” Her voice was dry parchment. “But you speak of ‘we’ and ‘our’ and ‘coalition.’ A coalition fights for a cause. For a leader.” Her eyes, dark and sharp as dragonglass chips, fixed on Jon. “So. Which is it? Do we fight for the dragon queen, or for the dragon’s bastard?”

Every eye turned to Jon. Luke felt the Force in the room tighten, a current gathering for a strike.

Jon didn’t look at Olenna. He looked at Daenerys.

Her violet eyes met his across the torchlit space, a silent conversation passing in the space of a heartbeat.

Then Jon spoke with an authoritative voice not unlike Ned's. “My father was Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. My mother was Lyanna Stark. They were wed in secret before the gods, with witnesses whose testimony is recorded. That makes me the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne, by blood and by law.”

A collective, sharp intake of breath. Ned stood utterly still, his face a mask of stone, but Luke could sense the pride flowing out of him.

Jon’s gaze finally left Daenerys and swept the room, pinning each lord in turn. “I will take the throne from the Lannisters. As both a conquer and as the rightful king.” He paused, and the final piece of the political gambit clicked into place. “With the support of my family and its armies.”

A heavy quiet dragged out, as the room watched by byplay between Daenerys and Jon.

Then Daenerys smiled and gave a single, regal nod.

“Family,” she said, the word a soft, dangerous promise in the quiet tent. “I will support family.”

The cheer started in the back of the tent, a low rumble from the mountain clans that grew as it spread forward. It was the sound of iron on shields, of boots stamping the frozen ground, a raw and hungry noise that pressed against the canvas walls and made the torches shudder. Torghen Flint threw his head back and howled. Robb Stark was the first to move. He crossed the space between them in three strides, his face alight with a fierce, uncomplicated look of pride. He seized Jon by the shoulders. “A Stark,” he said, his voice thick. “A Stark on the Iron Throne.”

The Northern lords took up the phrase, a chant that became a pounding rhythm. “Stark! Stark! Stark!” They were a wall of fur and mail, their breath misting in the torchlight, their faces transformed by a hope they hadn’t allowed themselves for years. Even the wolves outside lifted their voices to join the chant. He watched Jon absorb it, standing straighter under their hands, the weight of their belief settling onto him like a cloak he’d just realized he was born to wear.

The chanting eventually died and Jon turned to Ned.

"We have the ability to end this war fast and so we must act," he said. "With the Falcon, we can carry a strike team to King's Landing within a day. It can cross every wall between here and the city, set us down directly inside the Red Keep, and end this before the Lannisters know we have moved. With Master Luke, with the ship, with dragons above the city, why should we spend weeks on the road when we could finish this war in a few days?"

Han pushed off the pole at his back. "That," he said, "is the first smart thing anybody has said since I landed on this planet."

Leia gave him a look but Han purposely ignored it.

He planted both hands on the table. "We hit the Red Keep, pull this Joffrey kid out of his chair, and the whole rotten business drops on its face before sunrise."

Greatjon Umber slapped his palm against his thigh. "Aye. Fly me over their walls and I'll pull the little bastard out by his ankles myself!"

Oberyn smiled at that. "I have no love for long sieges," he said. "The lions have enjoyed too many dawns already."

Yet Ned had not moved. His good hand still held the table's edge and his face had set in a way Luke had learned to respect — the look of a man about to say no to a room that expected yes.

Leia watched Ned from across the tent. Luke caught her eye and saw recognition in it. Her father had stood that way in the Senate when every vote was against him and he was right anyway.

Han saw Ned's unresponsiveness too and drove harder. "Look, Lord Stark, this isn't sorcery and it isn't guesswork. Would it not be better if we end this war as soon as possible?"

"The ship," Ned said. "Does it carry weapons?"

Han looked at Luke. Luke nodded.

"Quad laser cannons," Han said. "Concussion missile tubes, and a ground-defense blaster. The usual loadout."

Greatjon Umber turned to the man beside him. The man returned the look with equal confusion. Around the table, Northern lords traded glances that found no purchase, each waiting for someone else to translate.

"What is a laser cannon?" Maege Mormont asked.

Han rubbed the back of his neck. "Light," he said after a moment. "Concentrated light that burns through anything it hits. Stone, iron, flesh. Four beams firing at once from two turrets on the hull."

"Like wildfire?" the Greatjon said.

"Umm… hmmmm… yes? Though, I can aim it."

Olenna's eyes narrowed and leaned forward, all laziness gone. The mountain clan chiefs looked at each other with the flat wariness of men who had just learned the rules of the game they were playing.

Ned had not moved. "So it can destroy castle walls?"

"Depends on the wall, but a stone wall? It can cut through it like butter."

"And men on the wall?"

Han held Ned's gaze for a moment too long. "There wouldn't be men behind the wall," he said quietly.

Ned turned to Jon.

"No."

Greatjon half rose, then checked himself.

"You claim the throne by blood and law," Ned said. "If you take it by a weapon no lord in the Seven Kingdoms can answer, the throne belongs to the weapon." He looked at Han, then back to Jon. "A dragon in another shape is still a dragon. When the ship leaves, what holds the realm? A king needs lords who chose to open their gates, not lords who watched their gates burn."

Luke put his hand on the table. "Lord Stark is right. The Falcon cannot be why Jon rules." He let that settle for a breath. "But it can be how he arrives."

Ned's attention moved to him but Leia continued the thought instead.

"They will not use the weapons on the Falcon. Instead, it will be used for transport only. The Falcon can carry a strike team south when the Reach host is close enough to hold the city's attention. Luke can then go in on foot and put the garrison down without a blade drawn, and open the gates from within." Her expression was honest but also left no room for argument. "Jon walks through gates with banners behind him and lords to witness. Not over walls."

"And if the gates do not open?" Daenerys said. She looked at Jon. "I can bring dragonfire to the walls. On your word, and not before."

Ned let go of the table at last. "Then the city is taken by men."

Greatjon rolled his shoulders. "When you leave," he said, and his voice carried weight rather than heat. "When the ship flies home, what keeps him on the Throne?"

Luke met the big man's eyes. "He has the skills to back his claims."

The Greatjon studied him for a long breath, then made a sound in his chest.

Ned drew the maps close with his good hand. "At first light, we march. Lady Olenna's army closes from the Kingswood. The Falcon carries men and nothing else. When the city's eyes turn outward, Skywalker and the strike team takes the gate."

Jon inclined his head to Ned first, then to Daenerys. "That will serve."

The council eventually broke apart in stages.

Ned caught Greatjon Umber near the entrance and bent his head toward him, bandaged arm close against his side while the big northman answered with heavy nods. Robb had already gone outside, swallowed by captains and kin the moment the decision was made. Olenna let Loras and a servant gather her up by degrees, cane first, complaint second. Oberyn touched two fingers to his brow at Luke as he passed. Leia rose more carefully than the rest. Han reached for her elbow before she asked, and she allowed it with the expression of a woman granting a small treaty.

But Daenerys remained by the table after the others broke away. Beyond the flap, Luke caught sight of two of her personal guards keeping their place by the entrance, close enough for a queen, far enough for a private word. The Mormont knight stayed inside by a rear pole, watchful and still.

Luke crossed the trampled rushes toward her, as her eyes hadn't left him as the tent emptied. “Ser… Master Luke? I am not sure what honor to bestow upon a mage from the stars.”

"Luke is just fine, Your Grace. Ser Luke, even, if that makes you more comfortable."

"I believe Master Luke is much more appropriate. There is something I wished to discuss with you, though I do not truly know how to even begin…"

"My father saved your and Bran's lives in a realm you can hardly believe exists. Do I have the gist of it?"

"…Yes. Can you… can you see the past?"

“No your Grace,” Luke smiled. “Bran told me.”

Her gaze searched his face for a beat, as if wondering if her experience was dream or not.

“And Bran?” she asked. “He held my hand there. I remember that most clearly. His hand, and the terror in him, though he tried to hide it from me. How fares he?”

“Alive,” Luke answered. “Overworked yet determined. He has more to carry than any boy his age should.”

“Yes but that didn't seem to stop him from trying to protect me,” she said, almost to herself.

Luke rested his metal hand against the edge of the table. “There is something else Bran gave me. He told me what happened before the old man tried to drain you.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “Yes.”

"Your connection to fire," Luke said, his voice low enough that the words stayed close. "When you feel anger, or grief… does it stir? Does the flame answer before you call it?"

Daenerys stared at the table between them, at the grain of the wood. Her brow furrowed, a slight parting of her lips as she considered. It was a question no one had ever asked. She thought of the pyres, of the heat that had never truly left her skin since that first miracle in the wastes. She thought of Morghaes, of the bond that pulsed like a second heart.

"Yes," she said, the word a soft exhalation. "Always. It was… a whisper. A warmth behind my ribs." Her eyes lifted to his. "Now, with him, it is a roar."

Luke nodded, as if she had confirmed a simple fact. "You have a connection to the Force, Your Grace. Like Jon. Like the Stark children."

Before she could form the question, Luke's gaze flicked to the wine pitcher on the table. His metal hand did not move from the table's edge. The ceramic lid of the pitcher lifted with a soft scrape. A thin, ruby-dark stream arced through the still air of the tent, a graceful serpent of liquid that poured itself into her cup without a single drop spilling. It settled with a quiet glug. The lid settled back into place.

Daenerys watched, her breath caught. The smell of the wine, rich with plum and earth, bloomed in the space between them. She looked from the cup to his face. A thrill, sharp and unfamiliar, cut through the exhaustion.

"Could you teach me?" The question burst from her, stripped of royal cadence.

A faint smile touched Luke's mouth. "My hands are rather full at present. The North, the Wall, the wars and teaching my current students." He trailed off, his gaze going distant, turning inward. The smile faded into thought. There was someone else. "But do not fear, I won't leave you untrained for long,"

Her breath left slowly. "…Thank you, Master Luke. I look forward to your guidance."

After a while Luke glanced toward the knight by the rear pole. “The man in Mormont colors, who is he?”

“My sworn shield,” Daenerys replied at once. “Ser Jorah Mormont. He crossed half the world with me. He stayed when staying grew costly. I trust him with my life.”

Luke weighed that against the thin drag he had brushed earlier and let it rest where it lay. “Then I’ll trust your judgment. Now, I have taken too much of your time, Your Grace, and I believe there are other's who you wish to speak to as well."

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Daenerys stepped out beneath a sky washed pale gold at the edge of evening, and the camp seemed smaller than it had an hour before. Men stood in knots outside the pavilion, each knot breaking and joining another as word from the council spread through the lanes. Beskha and Asher kept to either side of Daenerys at a bodyguard's distance, loose and watchful, while Ser Jorah stood a little farther back with the rest of her guard.

Luke moved away through the camp with Han beside him, as Han animatedly talked about the wolf following Luke around. His cup-trick still lived in her mind, the wine lifting and pouring through empty air as if a servant of wind had answered his call. The gift in her blood had a silhouette now. It could be named, trained, sharpened and that filled her with a strange feeling of excitement. Quaithe had once spoken in Braavos of a stranger who walks between stars. So she had meant him.

The thought stayed only a moment. The turning blue field Luke had cast above Tywin's maps and the dead man straining in its iron cage all of it still pressed at her. Then she saw Daemon ten paces from the tent flap, and the rest fell away.

Greatjon Umber had one hand on Daemon's shoulder and struck his back hard enough to shift him half a step. Robb stood at Daemon's side, grinning, while Grey Wind leaned against his leg with Ghost on the opposite side, near Daemon, calm and quiet, save for the turn of his head whenever some lord came close.

She had seen this before.

A vision of two boys. One dark, one auburn. A direwolf at their side. Moving through a yard like dancers with steel in their hands. Now the boys from that vision stood in churned river mud outside a captured lion's tent, each with a strange hilt riding at their hips.

Greatjon saw her coming and gave Daemon one last clap. "Save a little glory for the rest of us," he boomed. "Else we'll have to make up deeds for our own songs." Then he strode off toward a cluster of mountain men, laughter carrying after him.

The press around Daemon thinned by degrees. A Flint bent his knee and left. Wylis Manderly gave Daemon a measuring look, then Robb a nod, and moved away toward the horse lines. By the time Daenerys reached them, only the brothers and their wolves remained.

With the lords gone, the kingly mask he had worn before lords and banners also disappeared. What remained was someone younger, more uncertain, though no weaker for it.

"Your Grace," he said.

"Daenerys," she corrected. "We agreed. Actually, I prefer Dany."

A faint curve touched his mouth. "Dany, aye. We did."

Robb stepped forward then. He had his mother's coloring over his fathers, the auburn hair and blue eyes, but he moved with a northern certainty that reminded her of Lord Stark. He took her hand.

"Robb Stark," he said, his voice holding a warmer note than Daemon's. He bowed over her knuckles, his lips brushing the back of her hand. The touch was brief, formal, yet a heat prickled up her arm, blooming across her cheekbones before she could command it away.

Daenerys curled her fingers around Robb’s, the warmth of his kiss still prickling on her skin. “The pleasure is mine, Robb Stark. Your father spoke of you often.” She glanced between the two of them. “He painted vivid pictures, but I find the living men more compelling than any portrait.”

She turned to Daemon and said said. "I learned I had a nephew when I thought myself the last branch left unburnt."

Daemon's eyes lifted to hers. Grey, dark, and very unlike the eyes Viserys had cursed in memory whenever he spat Lyanna Stark's name. "He should have told me sooner."

"He should have," Daenerys agreed, because truth asked that much. "Even so, I thanked him regardless, he kept one of the few family members I have left, alive."

Daemon took a breath and let it out slowly. "It seems Lord Stark is getting into the habit of save Targaryens. I heard about the mess in Braavos."

Robb’s voice cut through the camp noise, plain as a hammer-stroke. “A dragon born in an inn, or a dragon’s inn. Which one would make a batter name for a song?”

Daenerys looked at him. The boy’s bluntness was a relief after all the careful layers of memory and loss. “The first,” she said. “Any inn can be named a 'dragon's inn'. But I believe that inn in Braavos was the only who who could boast a dragon was truly born in one. Speaking of strange tidings, Master Luke showed me something after the others left. He filled my cup from across the table without touching the jug."

Robb blinked. "Ah, he showed you the force."

Robb's brow furrowed. He held his hand out, fingers loose, and looked at the ground. A stone the size of a walnut shuddered in the dirt. It lifted, wobbling, a hand's breadth into the air. He closed his fist, and it shot into his palm.

"Like that." She kept her eyes on Robb. "He asked about the heat in me. The warmth that wakes before flame. I told him it had grown louder since Morghaes chose me."

Daemon went still in the way she had begun to recognize, whole attention drawn inward and outward at once. "Louder how?"

She sought the right words and disliked how few she had. "When he wakes, something in me wakes with him. When he turns his head, I know it a heartbeat before I see it. Fire comes easier when that feeling rises. Anger feeds it. Grief too." She paused. "And you?"

He took longer. "Sometimes the world slows. A man shifts his foot, or his breath changes, and I know where the blow will come from before he moves. Sometimes Ghost's nose gets into my head. Blood, horse, fear, rain, all of it at once. In the yard or on a field, it feels like something under my ribs has already chosen while the rest of me is still catching up. And now with Rhaegal…"

Daenerys watched him as he spoke. The kinship was strange but welcoming.

Robb huffed through his nose. "Grey Wind gives me hunger more than anything. And rage, if some fool gets near enough."

As if summoned, Grey Wind pressed his muzzle into Robb's hand. Robb's fingers found the wolf's ear and rubbed there without a glance downward.

Daenerys laughed then, a smaller sound than the camp deserved, but true. Robb turned that grin on her, easier than his brother and brighter.

"Do dragons care for scratching behind the ears?" he asked. "Or do they take the hand for insolence?"

"Morghaes has no ears to scratch."

"That sounds like a cruel design." Robb gave Grey Wind's ear another rub. "I'd still like to try. On the dragon, I mean. From a distance at first. A wise distance."

Daemon''s eyes cut sideways to his brother. "You have a poor understanding of wise distances."

"I made it this far."

A horn called from beyond the command tents. Men began moving with more purpose then, drifting toward a churned patch of ground near the center of camp where a block had been set earlier in the day. Word traveled quickly when a great lord meant to lose his head.

Daemon's expression sobered. "It is time."

Daenerys nodded. Daemon and Robb walked together with the wolves ahead of them, white and grey threading through men's boots and spearshafts like shadows cast by different moons.

The rasp of Ice leaving its sheath reached her before she had a clear view of the block.

Men were already gathered in a wide ring, northmen, rivermen, Reachmen, stormlords, even a few Dornish. Their talk died as Lord Stark stepped forward with the great dark blade in his hand. Roose Bolton knelt in chains before the block, pale as old milk, his face as calm as if he had been called to supper rather than judgement.

Lord Stark spoke the sentence in a voice flat as river stone and Lord Bolton listened without comment or pleas.

When Lord Stark asked for last words, Roose Bolton turned his head slightly, looking past the blade and past the man who held it.

"Lord Tywin letter was not the first," he said.

That moved through the ring faster than wind. Bolton's mouth gave the faintest curve. "My son has his instructions."

Then Lord Stark swung.

The stroke was clean enough to silence the ring for a breath after the head fell. No flourish. No wasted strength.

Daenerys watched Lord Stark lower Ice. He crouched where he stood, wiped the Valyrian steel himself, and rose again with Bolton's blood dark upon the cloth. She has never seen a lord who also swung the sword after judgement.

Lord Tywin letter was not the first.

The words meant little to her by themselves. The turn of heads around the ring meant more. Someone else had opened that door for Bolton. Someone still lived who could do the like again.

Lord Stark turned from the body and gave orders for the remains and men moved. Talk began again in low bursts, each lord choosing his own neighbor, his own suspicion, his own measure of what had just passed before his eyes.

Daenerys looked once at Daemon, once at the blade in Ned's hand, and once at the strange ship behind them.

The world had grown wider in a single day.

Daemon lasted three breaths before the lords claimed him again. But Robb stayed beside her. Grey Wind moved between them through the churned mud, broad shoulders brushing first her skirts, then Robb's boots, choosing both and neither. Beskha and Asher followed at a queen's distance. Ser Jorah came after with the rest, steady as ever.

They left the ring while men dragged Bolton's corpse aside and others argued in low hard voices over his last poison. Blood gave way to horse dung, cook smoke, boiled barley. Near the river Morghaes lifted his head and settled it again, black against the water.

Daenerys kept her eyes ahead. "You have seen the dead closer than any man here. And you have faced a White Walker."

Robb's stride shortened by half a step.

"What are they like?"

He walked a few paces before he answered.

"They are strange to behold," he said. "Beautiful in a cold way, like watching a predator move with grace."

He stopped there.

"And?"

Robb looked toward the west, where the last of day was draining out beyond the camp stakes. "And they will kill anything living in their way."

Daenerys said, "One war after another, when does the fighting stop."

"I don't think it does, Princess." Robb's voice came low. "And according to Master Luke, it might even be worse outside our world. But we have to keep fighting, to protect those we love."

Her tent stood beyond a row of wagons marked with the three-headed dragon. The canvas had gone ruddy in the falling light. Asher moved ahead to lift the flap. Beskha took the left side without a word. Ser Jorah came to the right, one hand resting near his sword, as if this were any other evening on any other march.

Robb slowed. "I need to see my father before the night ends."

"My thanks for the escort Lord Robb. You do have a way with words."

He gave a small nod, almost boyish despite the sword and mail. "Sleep while you can, Your Grace. Tomorrow will want its share."

"I am sure I might take some of that share."

He huffed a short laugh at that and turned back toward the Stark fires.

Grey Wind stayed where he was.

Daenerys noticed only that the wolf had paused in the lane, head lifted, ears pricked toward her tent. Then Asher held the flap wider, Beskha shifted to let her pass, and the moment was gone. She stepped inside. Canvas closed behind her, and the camp grew hushed at once.

A lamp burned on the small folding table beside her bedroll. Someone had laid out water, bread, and a dish of salt fish she had no hunger for. Her riding gloves came off finger by finger. Dust marked the lines of her palms. She set the gloves down and sat on the edge of the cot with a slow care that had more to do with weariness than grace.

Daenerys loosened her braid and set the silver comb aside. She drank a little water, stripped off her outer layers, and lay down once more, one arm across her middle. The cot gave beneath her. The blanket smelled of wool and woodsmoke. Morghaes's heat still touched the air, faint but present, like sun caught in black stone.

The tent was dark. The lantern had guttered while she slept, and only a faint orange glow remained in the wick, enough to throw shadows but not enough to read them by. The clicking had stopped. Then it resumed. It came from the bedroll.

Daenerys turned her head.

A creature like a scorpion crouched at the foot of her cot. Its little human face peered up at her with a hateful cast to its mouth, and its tail arched over its back, black barb wet and ready. Claws pricked the blanket. The clicking came again from its mandibles, small and busy and hideous.

Then Morghaes screamed.

The sound ripped across the camp, huge and savage, a dragon's cry for blood. Horses answered at once, shrill and frantic along the picket lines.

His rage came back through the bond like a black wave. In response, heat roared along her skin. The air above her fingers shook. The lamp flame bent sideways.

The manticore sprang.

Daenerys threw up both hands with a cry half fear, half fury, and the beast curled in midair as if some invisible forge had closed around it. Its shell blackened in a blink. The tail shriveled. It dropped at her feet with a greasy stink of scorched chitin and poison.

She stumbled backward until her shoulders hit the center pole.

Heat still poured off her skin.

The manticore lay on the carpet curled around itself, dead and charred. A thin thread of smoke rose from it. Her palms glowed red in the lamplight, yet her flesh remained whole. Her hands looked like her own hands, pale and small and trembling, save for the shimmer above them.

Outside, Morghaes screamed again, shorter this time.

Daenerys stared at her hands as if they belonged to some other woman.

The flap jerked open.

"Khaleesi."

Jorah came in with one hand on his sword.

Relief hit her so fast her knees weakened. "A manticore," she said, and heard how thin her own voice sounded. "In my bed."

He stepped across the threshold, his eyes going to the carcass first.

He moved another step, too fast and too straight.

Daenerys saw it then in the set of his shoulders, the line of his hips, the way his hand came off the sword hilt and slid toward his sleeve.

"Ser Jorah?"

He came at her.

Steel flashed in his hand, a narrow blade no longer than her forearm, and all the ground under her dropped away. Daenerys lurched backward, caught her calf on the cot, and pitched sideways into the little table, toppling the water cup.

Ser Jorah. Ser Jorah wanted to kill her.

He slashed once. She threw up an arm and stumbled clear by blind luck. Cloth split at her sleeve. The knife came back low and quick for a second strike. Daenerys snatched the table up between them with both hands and shoved. Wood crashed into his knees. It bought a heartbeat. He kicked through it.

His face held concern still, some hideous remnant of the part he had worn, yet the rest of him had shed all of it. The man advancing on her cared for speed now, for angles, for the cut that ended breath.

Daenerys backed into the center pole and had nowhere else to go.

The tent wall exploded inward.

Grey Wind hit the killer from the side with all the force of a falling horse. The direwolf's weight drove the man flat before the knife could turn. Grey Wind's jaws closed on his throat with a sound that belonged in a slaughter yard.

Blood sheeted across the rushes.

The knife fell from the man's hand.

Grey Wind shook once, hard, and the body kicked under him. His growl filled the tent, deep and murderous and steady as a drum.

Robb came through the torn canvas a beat later, a sword made of blue light drawn, cloak half off one shoulder, breath hard from the run. Robb had followed his wolf.

He stopped as soon as he saw the wolf already at work.

For a moment the whole tent was frozen in time, Daenerys against the pole, Robb in the rent wall with steel in hand, Grey Wind over Jorah's body, the manticore smoking on the floor between them.

Then Robb lowered his sword a finger's breadth and stepped between her and the body.

Grey Wind kept his jaws locked.

The man beneath him twitched once more, then lay still.

Daenerys slid down the pole because her legs had ceased to answer her. The packed earth struck her knees. She caught herself with both palms flat on the ground. Heat still ran through them. The dirt warmed under her skin.

Jorah lay on his back with Grey Wind above him, and blood soaked into his beard.

Then his face began to change.

Daenerys watched, unable to breathe.

The beard shifted first, loosening around the mouth. The broad cheeks seemed to sink inward. The heavy brow altered. Flesh at the jaw pulled and settled in another shape, as if some patient hand worked beneath the skin. When the change ended, a stranger stared upward with open dead eyes, plain-faced, older, a man she had never seen in Meereen or Braavos or upon any road she had walked.

Jorah was gone. Her stomach heaved.

Robb looked back over his shoulder once. “Dany.” Robb’s voice came almost like a whisper. He hadn’t moved from his position between her and the corpse. “Are you hurt?”

The words were lost in her shock.

“Daenerys.” Sharper now. He’d turned his head. She saw the hard line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders under the stained leather. Grey Wind made a low sound, not quite a growl, deep in his chest.

She tried to answer. Her tongue was thick, useless. She shook her head instead. A single, jerky motion.

He watched her for a second longer, then turned back. His knuckles were white where they gripped the sword hilt. The blue blade still pointed at the dead man’s throat.

Outside, something huge moved.

The ground jumped under her knees.

Morghaes landed beyond the tent with a crash that drove dust from the seams and sent the remaining lamp skidding across the floor. A long low rumble rolled through the fabric, deep enough to stir the cups upon the table leg that still stood.

Boots struck earth outside. More voices. Men gathering. She heard none of the words.

Luke came through the torn canvas with blue eyes wide and his black clothes damp at the hem from his run across camp. He took in the manticore first, curled and black near the cot. Then his gaze went to the corpse under Grey Wind, to the face that had once been Jorah's and now belonged to someone else. He stopped there. Something in his expression changed, some answer arriving too late to save anything.

Daenerys sat on the ground beside the face that had been Jorah's face, and the face was a stranger's face, and she had no words for any of it.