Nerd In the North 5-3 (Patreon)

Day 10, 299 ACThe cold was not new to Eddard Stark, son of Rickard Stark, himself the son of Edwyle Stark and so on for nearly eight thousand years unchanged, a persistance as unchanging as Winter itself.

It was not so now and he knew that if he lived another five-and-thirty years, that simple fact would find itself unchanged by any event or occurence known to neither man nor god.

It was a simple truth, that.

The Black Cells were, in and of themselves, equally simple in their truth.

At least to say, they offered no lies.

Their silence held no promises. Damp stone closed around him like the inside of a grave, thick with mildew, salt, and the stink of blood too old to be recent and too fresh to forget. Eddard Stark lay where they had left him, back to the wall, legs drawn close to keep the pain in his thigh from spreading, though it spread anyway. The wound had long since soured. No maester had come. The flesh burned, tight and swollen, and he knew the rot by its scent.

No healing to be found there, not truly.

Just rot, creeping slow.

He did not mark time by sun or moon. Only by the bread scraped across stone into his cell. Once a day, perhaps, accompanied by the slosh of water in his cup and the scrape of a key. Sometimes words passed between guards, low and careless, fools as they were. The dragon, they muttered to each other, had grown even larger now. No longer the size of a kitten, but now a small dog in the shape of a magical beast coiled now beside the queen’s youngest.

No longer whispers of war. Just awe. Just fear. Laughter at awaited the North.

He had not believed them. Not at first. He’d thought it the worst sort of mockery, by men who had little love for Northerners and lords both. The kind that weak men whispered in purposely loud voices to unseat a dying mind. But they spoke of it again, and again, in patterns too constant and words to natural to simply be the mummery men like them could attempt.

And on the nights when the cold was still and the silence deep enough, he began to believe them.

The stone sweated thick and dark with a damp moss, as salt and mildew hung thick in the air. When he moved, it was only to ease the pressure in his knees, the ache in his back. He did not cry out as the pain was familiar over so many days. It lived with him now, same as memory.

He thought of the children. Sansa, kept close by lions and prowled around like a potential meal. Arya, his wild daughter who vanished before the first Northman could fall to a Lannister sword. Robb, somewhere north, grown into his sword. Bran, still breathing. Rickon, too young for any of it. And… and Jon.

Gods, Jon. Safe on the Wall. Perhaps.

Even safer, now of all times.

Never to know his true parentage and even safer still for it.

Each name came nightly. Not with prayer. Just with habit. A list spoken into blackness, as if remembering them might hold them in place.

Keys rattled as footsteps approached.The door crashed open without warning. Light stabbed his eyes like a spear and he flinched away, arm raised too late. “On your feet, traitor.” Hands seized him before he could answer. He tried to stand, but his leg gave way. Uncaring, they dragged him forward, his boots scraping stone. Halfway down the corridor, he finally forced his weight upright. 

He would not be hauled to his death like a sack of grain.

“His Grace wants it done proper,” one muttered. “Public. Full court.”

That meant spectacle. A spike on the gate. And Sansa watching.

He was carried through stone halls he once walked beside kings. Past alcoves where he had spoken quiet truths. Past guards who had once bowed. The wound screamed each step. He clenched his jaw.

“Has there been word from the North?” His voice rasped, barely above a breath.

The guard on the left didn’t answer. The other did, eyes averted. “Not for you.”

The sky met him like a blow. His knees nearly gave again under the brightness. It wasn’t even noon. But to eyes steeped in darkness, it might as well have been the heart of summer.

The courtyard was full. Courtiers in bright silks. Gold cloaks in rows. Smallfolk pressed close behind ropes. All there to see a man die.

He saw the boy first. Crown heavy on golden curls. Joffrey. His hands tapping against the throne’s arm, quick with excitement. The bastard wore Robert’s crown with none of his blood. That was the truth. The truth that would kill him.

The rest stood behind. Varys with eyes too soft. Littlefinger with his smile. Pycelle watching the ground. No friends. No allies.

Sansa stood not far behind the throne. Thinner. Paler. Her hands twisted like they sought something to hold. She looked at him. And broke. He wanted to mouth something—stay strong, perhaps—but the space between them was too large for anything less than a shout.

He was glad Arya was not there.

Tommen sat beside the queen. The dragon—small, red, real—lay curled on his lap. Smoke drifted from its nostrils when it yawned. Its teeth were sharp. Its eyes older than they had any right to be.

Tommen’s eyes met his and Eddard Stark found his heart frozen as his own dark eyes fell on those that were no longer a bright Lannister green. Not anymore.

They were purple now.

The cold that passed through him then was not from the air. To hear was one thing, yes, but to see was another entirely. Not all of them were Jaime’s, it seemed. Or not only. The youngest had Targaryen blood, through his true father’s lineage. That much was plain.

The girl beside him—Myrcella—had hair more akin to silver than the Lannister gold it once was. It had not always been so, Ned remembered. She had looked like Cersei, if younger and with the plumpness of youth without so much as a first blood.

He had to wonder if that was Cersei’s doing, to color her daughter’s locks, a clumsy attempt to legitimize her other child to cast further doubt on Ned’s words and deepen the depth of his actions. He wouldn’t put such an act past her.

A lie in the godswood. A dragon in the cradle. And the truth he would soon die for that wasn’t truth at all.

The herald stepped forward, voice loud and practiced. The scroll unrolled with ceremony.

“Lord Eddard Stark, formerly Hand of the King, stands accused of treason against His Grace, King Joffrey, First of His Name…”

The words reached him through a wall of white, formalities, and words that he would normally take seriously whether leaving his mouth or others just a pointless proclamation dressed in silk and trumpets here and now, meant to soften what followed. Ned Stark did not soften in the face of it.

He straightened as much as the wound in his leg would allow. Every inch of him ached, but he stood regardless. There was no dignity in the crouch of chains.

Joffrey leaned forward on his makeshift throne placed in the courtyard for his comfort as if about to fall from it. He looked too small for the thing, the weight of the crown sitting clumsily atop his boyish face.

“Do you confess your treason, Lord Stark?” The boy-king’s voice cracked on the word ‘treason’, youth and immaturity clear in every mannerism. It was strange to see it here in a boy of ten and three, both Jon and Robb at the same age more men in their own ways than the pompous prince could claim or grasp at.

Ned’s eyes moved to the girl beside him, positioned on the opposite side of the queen. Sansa. His daughter’s hands were folded tight, white-knuckled, mouth pressed to keep from trembling. He looked at the crowd beyond—furs and velvets, gold and polished steel all the way to where it gave way to roughspun and rags of the smallfolk—and then at the Lannister on the throne, bare-faced and giddy with power.

He had chosen honor before. It had cost his men. It had nearly cost him his daughters, Ned once again thankful Arya was so willful.

He would not make the same mistake again. No, Eddard Stark bowed his head, instead, accepting his faults and spoke with the weight he had earned and regret he had carried for so long in the cold and darkness.

“I, Eddard Stark, betrayed the trust of King Robert. I conspired to deny his heir the throne. Regardless of my reasoning or any justification I could claim, I am guilty of treason and that is not to be denied.”

Sansa’s shoulders dropped as her hands flew to her face. She believed. Of course she did. She still believed in the shape of stories, in the idea that words spoken aloud could bend steel, even in the hands of wicked men.

“Wonderful.” Joffrey’s grin widened until it nearly split him. “Mother, I’ve decided to be merciful.”

Cersei’s body stilled at the specific sound of her son’s voice and the Queen regent turned to him slowly. “Jof-“

“Let it not be said that your king is not a gracious one. Eddard Stark, the traitor, shall keep his head,” Joffrey shouted, voice far from calm and lacking the depth to be a command, interrupting his mother before she could utter a single word, no matter what it was. “No, I shall have his heart.“

Ah, Eddard almost smiled. There it was. The true sentence beneath the false mercy. Ned had been in the South too long to expect anything else.

Cersei reached for him, her hand not gentle. “Your Grace, he has confessed. The Night’s Watch—”

He yanked his arm free from her grip, looking as petulant as any child of just eight or nine namedays in that moment. Ned doubted that it would go unnoticed that the child that had actually just exceeded his ninth nameday seemed more composed than the king, even if unsettled by the events. “I’M the king! ME! Not you! I decide what happens, not you!”

Sansa took a step forward before anyone could stop her, nearly wrenching free from Ser Meryn’s grip. “Your Grace, please!” she cried, her voice nearly cracking from grief and fear. “He confessed! You said he would be spared!”

Joffrey turned, face flushed with the thrill of attention but clearly still eager for blood. “Lady Sansa pleads for her father,” he spoke again loudly, eyes on the crowd. “Very well. I shall show mercy.”

Cersei’s eyes narrowed from where Ned stood, the look of a mother that knew her child.

“Lord Stark shall have a fair trial for his misdeeds against the throne, against my father, and against me. He shall have the fairest trial of them all, a trial by combat, judged by the gods themselves,” Joffrey declared, facing the crowd. “And as I’ve heard He shall fight… me.”

Silence met the Lannister’s proclamation. Then a ripple of voices. Gasps, even. Some outright laughter at those words, with all but the most foolish and bloodthirsty in the crowd not believing such a thing right.

Cersei’s voice dropped, but Ned could still hear it. “Joffrey, you musn’t. This is… this is…”

“This is law, Mother,” Joffrey replied, dragging the jeweled sword from its scabbard. The blade caught the sun. It looked sharp enough to wound but not to kill. “As in, I am the king. My word is law.”

“Your Grace,” Ned said, voice rough from disuse, but unwilling to simply face his death without so much as allowing the boy a chance to walk back an action that would plunge the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms into a war the likes of which it had never seen before. “I cannot fight. My leg is broken. This is no justice.”

Joffrey tilted his head. “If you cannot fight, you can kneel. Or die. Either way, the crowd will remember your punishment.” He neared Eddard now, his smile growing. “I’ve heard you Starks say that the man who gives the sentence must swing the sword. Truly, I am a good king even by the standards of Northern savages.”

Ned grit his teeth at the insult and opened his mouth to argue, even meeting the eyes of Cersei and Jaime both but before the former Hand could utter so much as a word, two gold cloaks seized him by the arms. His knee gave under the pain, dragging him down. The flagstones blurred for a moment. He heard Sansa sob.

“Father! Please!” Her voice cracked like ice splitting. “Please, Your Grace, please…”

Joffrey circled him, posture upright with feigned ease, blade in hand, his smirk sharpened by the hush that had fallen over the crowd. “My father would have killed you with one blow,” he said, voice rising with excitement. His eyes were bright with cruel delight. “But I want to make you bleed first. I want everyone to see you bleed!”

The thrust landed beneath Ned’s collarbone, off-mark, driven not by skill but spite. It punched deep and crooked. His breath left him with a sound too ragged to be a cry. He did not fall. Not yet. He clenched his jaw against the pain, and stared at the boy—no, not a boy. Not Robert’s son.

Another jab. This one higher. Sloppy. Less force, more frenzy. Joffrey’s arm trembled with the effort.

“This is justice,” the kingling crowed, turning half to the crowd, basking in the noise. “He betrayed the Crown. He confessed. Treason earns death. By the sword.”

Cersei had risen from her chair. Her voice came tight with warning. “Joffrey. That is enough.”

He didn’t turn. He didn’t listen. “He said the words. He lied to the realm, conspired against me. A traitor and a coward. He dies by my hand.”

She took two steps forward, but Ser Meryn moved between them. Her lips drew into a thin line. Ned saw her restraint crack in the press of her knuckles against the rail. It didn’t matter now.

Pain flared again. Lower this time. Ned’s leg gave. The gold cloaks caught his arms, pulled him upright so Joffrey could keep playing.

The yard blurred at the edges. Sansa’s voice cut through it. Sharp. High. “No—no—please, Your Grace—please, he confessed, he confessed—”

She struggled against the Kingsguard. Her skirts tangled round her legs, her hands white-fisted. The Hound held her back, not roughly, but firm. She wept without grace, tears streaking down her cheeks, mouth open in a sob she couldn’t swallow.

“He’s my father,” she gasped, voice cracking, raw and loud now, nothing courtly left. “He said the words! Let him take the black, please, please—”

Joffrey turned, lips parted like he’d only just remembered she was there. “He’s nothing now! Just a traitor!” Joffrey snapped, face flushing red as he raised the sword again.”

The boy’s grip was poor. His shoulders too soft. But the blade was steel.

Ned’s eyes found Tommen. The boy sat stiff beside his mother’s seat, dragon on his lap, its wings folded. The beast watched with slit pupils, head tilting as if curious, not stirred.

Cersei hissed something to Meryn—too low to hear—but the knight didn’t move. Her eyes were wild now. She’d lost control.

Another strike. A white bolt through his ribs. His head fell forward. He tasted iron.

Faces spun in haze. Arya—was that her? Shadow-thin, darting between the folds of the crowd. And a man, black-cloaked, pulling her back. Too far to call. Too late to warn.

The cold found him again. It wasn’t the cells this time. It was the cold of home.

He saw her hair—Sansa’s—spilled like blood on stone. Her mouth open in a cry she could not shape into words. A scream caught in the throat, waiting.

The boy-king raised the blade one last time.

Let it be done.