Chapter Text
“You are under no obligation to take him,” Mother told Brienne, still trying to change her mind, but Sansa didn’t bother. Privately she agreed with Mother: whatever Robb said about how Jaime had changed, and proven himself, it still wasn’t sensible for Brienne to put herself in the power of the Lannisters. But Brienne wasn’t a sensible person, and she’d already promised to marry Jaime, so there wasn’t any point wasting time on arguing with her. Instead what they needed to do was make it as clear as possible to him and all the Lannisters that she had the full protection of House Stark at her back, and if they gave her trouble, they’d get more than they wanted in return.
So Sansa told Brienne that she wanted to make the wedding a great celebration, and to invite lords from the south for the feasting. “I know you don’t want a fuss for your own sake,” she added, before Brienne could start to make the protests that Sansa could see immediately filling up her mouth, “but we could use this to strengthen the peace a great deal and maybe clear some of the bad blood. And—don’t raise Jaime’s hopes, but I’ll try to persuade the Lannisters to send Prince Tommen,” so of course Brienne gave in.
None of that was a lie; Sansa did mean to strengthen the peace as much as she could: by showing the lords of the south that the North wasn’t the poor country cousin of the realm anymore, and that House Stark was a threat to reckon with even aside from their invincible king. And she meant to do it no matter how many protests everyone around her put up. “Yes, you do have to stay,” she told Rickon sternly, when he tried to escape the festivities by claiming that he and Lyanna suddenly had to go back to Bear Island right away. “It’s a few feasts and a ball. You’ll survive. If you want, you can just stand in a corner and glower at people.”
Arya tried to get out of it too, but it was easier to change her mind. “I have work for you to do,” Sansa said. “We have enemies coming, not just friends. I want you to just appear next to them, all night long. Preferably with a knife in hand, and well in reach of their throats, even if—especially if—they have guards with them. I want those people to all go away knowing that if House Stark really needs someone dead, if they make themselves that much of a danger to us, they’ll die.”
That was enough to reconcile her to attending. “Can you invite Joffrey?” she asked.
“Would he leave here alive if I did?” Sansa said dryly, and Arya only scowled in answer.
Robb started out with only mild complaints about the expense and the bother of hosting such a large party, and didn’t really kick over the traces until he saw the new tapestries in the Great Hall. Sansa had used the excuse of the wedding to ask many of their bannermen to send needlewomen to them for the weeks before, to help with preparations, and with that small army she’d been able to finish off the lavish new hangings that she’d already had their own women working on: a series running the whole length of the hall, celebrating all of Robb’s great victories. They’d even been able to finish off the one showing the triumphant destruction of the Night’s King at the Iron Fist, to hang behind the throne.
She’d been careful to tell all the women that they were a surprise for the king, and they all had to pretend they were working on a set of allegories of the seasons, so Robb didn’t have a chance to start howling until they went up the very night before the arrival of the honored guests—Prince Tommen was coming, and so were dozens of southern nobles—when it was too late to take them down. Robb did want to send men hunting for the old hangings anyway, but Sansa managed to distract him by deliberately letting slip that Vervain was also going to be performing a new song, all about the destruction of the army of the dead.
“That’s even better!” Robb said. “You’ll make me look like my head’s swelled to three times my size!”
“The song’s not just about you. It’s all about Jaime and Brienne’s quest, to honor them, and Jon and Meera and Bran as well,” Sansa said. More specifically, a lot of the song was about Brienne heroically saving more than half of House Stark, and the great debt that the kingdom of the North owed her, which they’d be glad to repay.
Robb glared at her. “Oh, aye, I’m sure it is. And I’m also sure it ends with me swanning in like the Warrior himself from on high to smash the Night’s King with my invincible army, doesn’t it!”
Sansa certainly hoped so; she’d made sure to get Vervain all sorts of details from the men about the battle, and encouraged him to make a point of just how big the horde had been, and how handily Robb had torn them apart. “Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t do heroic things and ask a great troubadour not to sing about them, especially with such an important audience here to listen to his work,” she said, unremorsefully. “We could send him away, if you insist,” which she knew perfectly well Robb wasn’t going to, since Vervain had been able to wheedle his way into the royal bedchamber on a regular basis even after Robb had come home.
Brandon and Bert and Elia were also going to be at the tables, to demonstrate that the next generation of House Stark was promising, and to start powerful lords thinking about the matches that House Stark was going to be making, very soon, for all the king’s children, and whether they might not want to be on the other end of some of them. Fortunately, the children weren’t going to put up a fight: instead, two weeks ago she’d told them very austerely that if they behaved well at dinnertime from then until the guests arrived, she’d allow them to come to the wedding feast and stay up past bedtime, and even Elia had been a model of decorum ever since.
But the greatest prize she really wanted out on display was Jon: for everyone in Westeros to know that House Stark now had the priceless treasure of a second man of war, a man who could command their armies and master their bannermen, who’d stand as regent if ever anything happened to Robb before his sons were grown.
She tracked Jon down in the nursery, playing a game of aughts with Brandon and Bert on the other side. Elia and Brynda and little Tral were all climbing on his back, and Wendel was waiting patiently in line with a book. “I’d say you were under siege, but I think the conquest is well begun,” Sansa said, and they all at once set up a clamor of protest at the idea that she might take Jon away. Instead she had to take a turn at reading and play a round herself before she could extract him, and even then the children wheedled a promise to come back after dinner out of him. “If you give them an inch, they’ll take the whole kingsroad,” Sansa warned him, although to be fair, she’d yielded more time than she should have herself, between playing games and cuddling Talisin. “You should start as you mean to go on.”
“But I’m happy to go on as I’ve begun,” he said, smiling back at them, a light in his face that made her smile, too.
“I suppose it agrees with you,” she said. “You’re looking better. Robb was worried how thin and worn-down you were, when you came back.”
“Is that why I’m being fed like a goose for Winterfair?” Jon snorted. “It’s on the hour, I think. Some page is handing me a hot pasty, or Robb’s sending for wine and bread and meat, or Mother’s insisting I come and have tea and cakes. What?” he asked, because she couldn’t help the half-bewildered shake of her head, hearing him say Mother just like that. He wasn’t even making a deliberate effort, she could tell, because as soon as he asked the question, he realized exactly what, and looked abashed, as if it had just come out without thinking.
“I’m glad,” Sansa said. “It’s just funny that it’s taking all the rest of us longer to get used to it than either of you. I think Arya’s still waiting for one or both of you to pull off your faces and turn out to be strangers underneath.”
“That’s what we did do, only the other way around,” Jon said. “We took off the faces we’d worn to each other, all those years, and we were family underneath.”
He listened to her request with a small frown, and she was prepared for whatever protests he was about to marshal, but when she’d finished, he only said slowly, “I’ll do it if you think best.”
“But?” she said, curious; he still sounded doubtful.
“Robb’s told me what you’ve done for the realm,” Jon said. “And I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Those caches saved our lives, that you laid down. We could mark our pace by when we found them. If something happens to Robb—it’s you who’ll be ruling the North, until Brandon comes of age, and if he has any sense, he’ll go on listening to you after. Now what have I said?” he added, a little wryly, because she was staring at him. “I’ll help you any way I can, but you can’t think I’d try to take your place?”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, bemused. It wasn’t that she’d thought Jon would want her place, but she would have expected him to want—Robb’s. To think of himself as the ruler of the realm, having the final say. She hadn’t worried about it; she’d been confident she’d be able to manage him. But that wasn’t the same thing as—having him offer to help her, having him acknowledge her work. There weren’t many men who liked doing that even when she wasn’t standing between them and the power of the throne.
She did want to put him at the high table at Robb’s right hand anyway. “It’s still important,” she explained. “There are men who won’t want to obey a woman, and others who won’t want to fear one. Our enemies would try to use that, if they had the chance.”
Jon’s face hardened. “And if we show them that they won’t have that chance—there’s one less reason for them to go at Robb,” he said. She nodded, surprised again a little, and he nodded back to her, grimly determined. “Aye. Is there anything else I can do?”
He meant it. She’d arranged dozens of smaller private gatherings with many of the guests: there were especially powerful bannermen who needed to be shown more attention, and some of dubious loyalty who’d been invited for a little reinforcement. There were riverlords who needed courting, for the sake of trade, and so in case war with the south ever came, they’d stay united behind House Tully and join Robb. There were southern noblemen whose opinions would matter to Tywin, if they came back with reports of the strength and unity of House Stark, and others who might even be willing to ally with the North. Yara was coming, and bringing along three of her most powerful captains; she’d written that she was thinking of their daughters for Rheon, which was her excuse for bringing them to Winterfell to be presented to Robb, but Sansa knew that what she really wanted was for House Stark to impress them, which would help her keep them in check.
But Robb wouldn’t be able to come to more than a handful of those meetings himself; he’d be too busy hosting in the Great Hall, and anyway she had to keep him in reserve for only the most important guests. She’d hoped to drag Rickon and Jon to a few of the others, at best, but instead Jon came to every last one of them. He was even better for it than Robb would have been: much more grim and stern. Every last one of her dubious lords eyed him a little uneasily, and swallowed many of the complaints and needling remarks that she’d been expecting out of them.
He was even more use when she met with the Wildling chieftains that Mance Rayder had sent—also men that he thought could use some impressing—because one of them was a Longhill chief, and two of the men who’d gone north to the three-eyed raven had been from that tribe. Jon took the chief’s hand, and spoke to him of the men’s bravery, and asked after their families. It couldn’t have been better, and Sansa seized the opening to give them rich gifts in thanks: the Wildlings liked presents as much as anyone, but it put their backs up if they felt they were being bribed; they had to feel like the gifts came from respect.
Jon also came with her to meet with Ser Gerold Lydden, one of the westerlords who’d come along with Prince Tommen: his father was one of Tywin’s inner circle, the current Master of Law, and she knew very well that his heir had been sent to poke and pry at their house, and find any chances of trouble that Tywin could stir up. It was quickly clear that she was one of his main targets. Ser Gerold was a smiling and handsome knight, golden haired and blue-eyed, and he paid court to her in a carefully calculated way. He started out lightly, trying to see if she’d encourage him at all—Tywin would have been delighted to have her make such a stupid match, asking for a knife in her back or Robb’s or both—and when she didn’t, making clear she wouldn’t take him seriously as a suitor, he became just a little bit aggressive instead, without crossing a line where she could reasonably take offense, while also raising the serious issue of the tax relief that the crown had given the Riverlands in thanks for Robb’s support against Daenerys.
At least, that was the way he put it. The crown hadn’t given anything, of course; the riverlords had just taken the tax relief when Robb had told them they could, instead of taking Clegane’s attack on him as a cause for war, and they’d been sending a substantial portion of that relief north, calling it gifts instead of taxes, one small step from openly changing back their allegiance.
Tywin had swallowed it temporarily, but he’d found out when Robb had started mustering his army to go North—there were too many southron spies in the North to keep that from him—and he’d started a muster of his own at the same time. Sansa hadn’t been able to formally object; for once it had been reasonable and not vicious, because Robb had started their muster going less than a week after Brienne had ridden away, before there was any real cause for him to point to for him to do it. Sansa had even argued against it for just that reason, that they’d be giving the Lannisters an excuse, but for once Robb had overruled her.
“No,” he’d said, grimly. “I’m not waiting. She’s gone to find Bran, and she won’t come back until she’s done it. And when she does, she’ll have found them, too. I can smell it,” and she’d fallen silent, because she’d felt that he was right, even though it hadn’t made any real sense.
So Robb had raised his levies, and when they’d got the first raven, the one Brienne had sent telling them that she’d picked up Bran’s trail with a tribe of Wildlings she’d called the quiet people, Robb had ridden out for the Wall with his guard the same day. It had won the war: he’d already been marching along the Bitter when that last frantic trio of ravens had reached them, telling them of the desperate flight coming south.
But that meant that now Tywin had an army raised in the south, inches away from the Riverlands, while much of their own forces were still up in the far north. He wasn’t going to start a war against them while Jaime was in the North, in their power. But Jaime and Brienne would be leaving after the wedding, to go and make their home in Casterly Rock, and Ser Gerold had been sent to take the Riverlands back with them, with that saber to rattle at House Stark.
He said in over-effusive tones of apology, “King Joffrey charged me to express his regrets to…your brother,” avoiding even the courtesy of giving Robb his title. “The burden of the payments to Meereen has been greater than expected, and though his sentiments remain unchanged, the relief must be suspended henceforth. I’m certain you will understand our position,” he added, and sent his eyes traveling slow and lascivious up and down her body, and ended in something that wasn’t quite a wink, an over-friendly crinkling of his eyes that just felt like one.
It was meant to make her angry, and it worked; her left hand, under the table, tightened until the nails dug into her palm, although she kept her smile the same while she mastered herself, to think about the answer to give him, and then he was jerking a little in alarm as Jon stalked around to the other side of the table, his face a hard, furious mask, and seized him by the collar and the arm and heaved him out of his chair and hauled him stumbling straight to the door. “The next time you think of offering insult to our king’s Hand, I’ll ask him how many pieces of you he wants me to send back to yours,” Jon said by his ear, low and murderous, and shut the door on him.
“I don’t need defending,” she said sharply, as he came back to the desk.
“Aye, but you did need time,” Jon said. “Otherwise you’d’ve given him your answer and slapped his face for him, wouldn’t you?” She blinked at him. “If you decide you have to put up with him, you can tell him I’m near a savage, after ten years living in the wastes. And I can follow him round the keep glowering the rest of the wedding.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You want to do that anyway.”
“What I want to do is beat him out of the keep with the flat of my blade, if he doesn’t give me an excuse to gut him on the way,” Jon said, a growl, and she couldn’t really blame him. “Do we have to put up with him?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ll need to speak to Robb about it.”
Jon helped her with that, too: she told him everything she’d been able to learn about the forces Tywin had raised, and he laid them out on the war table along the border of the Riverlands, taking guesses about where they’d cross the Blackwater, where they’d have the Freys put their men, and which keeps they’d come at first. She only needed to have a page slip Robb away from his hosting for half an hour. He came to the war room and nodded as Jon took him through what he’d done. “Right,” Robb said. “Let’s throw on another fifty thousand for them.”
“Fifty thousand!” Jon said.
“Well, we don’t want to make it too easy for ourselves, do we?” Robb said, in mock earnest. The two of them put out the markers, and then Robb stood back, studying the map frowning; he changed the positions of a dozen companies and looked at it again; then a slow, vicious smirk spread over his face and he gave a little shrug, deliberately careless. “Let him try it if he likes.”
“Are you sure?” she said.
Robb gave her a wounded look and then grinned as she frowned severely back. “Aye, I’m sure. Jon’s right: their greatest advantage is having the Freys at the top of the Neck, dividing us from our allies in the Riverlands, and this is the best way they can use it, so that’s what they’ll do. But I won’t come at them through the Riverlands. We’ll tell Uncle Edmure and his men to just hunker down in their keeps. Meanwhile, Manderly will send every ship in White Harbor to take up our men, anywhere they can get to on our eastern coast, and we’ll land them at Duskendale, just the way I thought Daenerys might. I’ll only have thirty thousand men, but we’ll run straight for the gates of King’s Landing while the Lannisters are busy wasting their time besieging half a dozen keeps in the Riverlands. When they turn around and try to come back, the riverlords will come out and we’ll have them caught between us, while the Freys sit in the Neck staring at Moat Cailin. No trouble about it at all,” he added breezily, and she sighed with relief and sent him back to the welcome dinner he was hosting for Prince Tommen.
“Now can I chase that twat Lydden out the gates?” Jon said, a little wistfully.
“No,” Sansa said, not without considering it. “But I won’t give him any explanations, either. When he goes back to the Red Keep and tells them that I had you throw him out of our meeting and wouldn’t speak with him again, Tywin will know that means I’m not worried—and then he’ll worry.”
Jon did keep glowering at Lydden throughout the wedding feasts, between helping her ride herd on the rest of their family, which was more badly-needed help. She had to send him to chase Rickon back into the hall five times in the three nights, and to stop Arya from actually stabbing people twice.
And then Robb tried to make his own escape, on the night of the wedding itself, just before Vervain’s performance was meant to begin. He’d chosen his time carefully, waiting until Sansa’s guard was down. He’d been the one to escort Brienne to the tree, and after they’d come back from the godswood to the feasting, he’d made the first toast to the newlyweds, danced three dances, and even went around the tables to speak to many of the guests. He’d waited until the first candles were starting to burn low before he finally sneaked out.
Sansa only just barely realized he was gone in time to wave an urgent delay to the musicians, and have them keep the dancing going, while she and Jon and Mother fanned out through the keep to urgently hunt him down. Although it turned out to be Jaime Lannister who actually found him. She was just coming upstairs into the old family chambers in the west tower when she overheard their voices coming from Father’s old study, arguing.
“Why are you making a fuss?” Robb said. “Go listen to it yourself, if you like! Anyone would think you wanted to have me hung up in stars for half the realm.”
“I couldn’t care less about half the realm,” Jaime said. “I want you hung up in stars for my father. Yes, he’s delighted to have me married. Now that he’s gotten that step out of the way, he’ll want something else, and if Brienne doesn’t cooperate within a year, he’ll start informing me I’m to swap in a nubile young maiden, or else.”
“And you think it’ll make a difference to him, that I’ve sat through some mortifying song, a thousand miles away?” Robb said, incredulously.
“You’re the king,” Jaime said. “If you don’t bother to show up for the song about your triumph, it’s a failure and it dies in your hall. You smile and clap and throw the jongleur a bag of gold, the song’s a success, and every other visiting songster will sing it from here to the Red Keep. And yes, it’ll make a difference to my father, to hear a song about Brienne saving all the children of House Stark. I need him to at least worry a bit that you’d go to war for her sake.”
“I would go to war for her sake!” Robb said, in dudgeon, which made Jaime stiffen in alarm. “Of course I’d go to war for her sake. She did save half my family, if not all of it!”
He was glaring, and Jaime looked grim a moment; then he raised his chin in defiance and said, “Good. Then I assume you won’t mind granting her the right to bear the direwolf sigil on her arms, and dower her with a holdfast in the North?”
“No? I don’t mind at all?” Robb said, in baffled tones, and when Jaime stared at him added with more heat, “No! I don’t mind! A holdfast and a coat of arms?”
“Oh, but listening to a song, that’s the hard limit!” Jaime said.
Robb threw up his arms a little and sighed. “All right, fine,” he said, half despairingly. “I’ll come down and listen to my own praises. I suppose you’d like me to have him sing it again tomorrow?”
“Why, what a splendid idea,” Jaime said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the desk with his hip, full of smug victory. “What are you even complaining about? Think about all the southern noblewomen visiting for the feast. Isn’t this a wonderful opportunity to impress your next mistress? Surely only nine whelps isn’t enough of a litter.”
Robb gave him an annoyed look, and then his mouth suddenly curled in a slow, malicious smirking. “Well, if you really wanted your father to worry,” he said, grinning at him wickedly.
Jaime glared back at him furiously. “Fuck off, Stark.”
Robb laughed. “Maybe I’ll just mention to Brienne that any time she likes, I’d be more than happy to help her keep any and all of her Lannisters on…a very short leash,” he added, and eyed Jaime lasciviously up and down. Jaime tried to keep glaring, but he’d turned red; it was perfectly obvious that he would also have been more than happy to have Robb helping Brienne do whatever she liked with him.
Unluckily for them, Mother and Jon had just caught up with Sansa right then—she hadn’t bothered to interrupt them, since Jaime was doing the work for her—and Mother said in a snarl from the doorway, “You will do no such thing,” as they both jumped like rabbits and stared out at her in wide-eyed horror.
“You, back to your tables,” Mother said to Robb icily. “And you, back to your wife,” she added to Jaime, and they both shamefacedly slipped past on either side of her and went opposite ways down the corridor to go back down to the Great Hall. Mother shook her head in outrage. “Sometimes I think it would be just as well if he could be shut up in the kennels with the wolves!” she said half under her breath, and stalked off after Robb, leaving Sansa to look at Jon, and Jon to look back at her, and as one they both darted into the study together and Jon shut the door and they both burst into snorting laughter stifled behind their hands.
The performance went off splendidly, although Mother didn’t stop glaring virulently at Robb and Jaime the entire time. The song was brilliant, and even Robb was blinking away tears at the very end, as Vervain sang of coming home in winter, after a long road running, with the gates wide and the warm hearth waiting, shelter and sanctuary and open arms. Sansa didn’t try to stop her own tears: in her head it was the yard at Riverrun, running to Robb’s arms, to freedom, the moment that still lived in her as the inexpressibly lucky second chance the gods had given her, to have back what she’d lost, what she’d never risk losing again. Beside her she heard Jon gasp in a wet breath and looked over to see him staring down, unashamed tears running down his own face. He looked up at her and smiled through them, and on an impulse she reached out and they clasped hands between them, his iron-hard grip comforting.
Brienne was nearly the only one in the hall who hadn’t cried; she was staring fixedly down at her plate with her head bowed, a blotchy agonized red in the face, even more miserable than Robb. She would probably have run away during the song herself, if Jaime hadn’t been holding her in place with her hand clasped firmly in both of his. When the song had ended, though, he lifted her trapped hand to his lips and kissed it, and said to her, “Well, my lady?” a little hoarsely. He was looking at her with his own wet eyes as if she was that same desperately sought shelter, for him, and seeing it, Sansa let out a small sigh of relief, feeling for the first time as if she could believe that he really wouldn’t betray Brienne, no matter what his father did.
Brienne shoved her chair back hurriedly, eager to escape, although she was blushing even more fiery red at all the lusty cheering that followed them down the full length of the Great Hall. Brienne was all but towing Jaime; he was smirking at everyone to either side the whole way, obviously pleased with himself and happy to drag out the procession, and only more when she shot him a desperate glare, but as soon as they’d made it past the grinning pages holding the doors open for them, he was off like an arrow and into the lead up the stairs, pulling her with him towards the waiting wedding chamber.
Even Mother looked a little mollified, watching them go, although she still cast a warning eye on Robb as the music picked up again. “There ought to be a guard upon that bedchamber,” she said darkly.
“Which of our guards is going to stop Robb?” Sansa said, raising an eyebrow.
Mother pressed her lips together and told Jon, “Then you must do it, and if your brother dares to try and go in there, you may tell him that if he does, I will come and take him out of it again, if I must pull him by the ear like a page.”
Sansa just barely managed not to burst out laughing all over again as soon as she imagined the look on Robb’s face. Jon was grinning too. “I don’t know, I think it might be treason,” he said, teasing.
Robb was leading out the next round of dancing with Goneril, since Talisa was too great with child, nearly at her confinement: she had gone to sit by one of the warmer hearths, with Walda and Nymeria, and Vervain singing to them all. The floor wasn’t thin of company: there were nearly twenty noblewomen visiting from the south to pad out the ranks.
Sansa suspected that more than a few of them would have been very happy to join the harem, but the only one worth paying attention to was Lady Allinor of House Peake. Sansa eyed her narrowly. It wasn’t impossible that she only wanted to become a mistress of the king, but she was being a little too clever: she’d had the good sense to go sit beside Talisa and pay court to her instead of making cow eyes at Robb in the dancing. Over the last few days, she’d made efforts to talk to Mother, too, and to every other Stark she could get to. If Allinor was thinking it through that far, she wasn’t just starry-eyed over the King in the North, and she was too eligible. She was a widow, of an Osgrey knight who’d died in the Battle of the Blackwater, but she’d been a young girl when she’d been married. She was still only six and twenty now, and her husband had left her childless and with property. She could have made a real match, something that would matter to her house. If she’d come here instead, it was for a reason.
Sansa was just trying to think of what the reason might be when Mother said to Jon, in a familiar tentative way, “She is a charming woman,” and she was also looking across the hall at Allinor—who had been going to far more trouble to display her charms to Jon than to Robb, Sansa realized, feeling annoyed with herself for missing the obvious answer. That was an excellent reason: the unmarried brother of the king would be an ideal match for an ambitious and clever woman.
“I suppose she is,” Jon said.
“Shall I invite her to take tea with us tomorrow morning, perhaps?” Mother said, and Sansa listened a little tensely for Jon’s answer. Allinor was charming, and why wouldn’t Jon want a wife of his own, and children of his own?
But instead he only said wryly, “Are you in such a hurry to be rid of me, then?” trying to make light of the question.
Of course Mother wouldn’t let him get away with that; she said a little impatiently, “You would not need to leave us. She would be glad to make her home in Winterfell…”
But then Jon put his hand on hers and said gently, “I can’t.” Mother paused. “All I’ve ever wanted is to be part of this family. I’m not ready to make another. And how could I ask a woman to cleave to me, when I’m not willing to cleave to her?” He jerked his chin a little towards Allinor. “Aye, she might be glad to make her home here, but House Stark wouldn’t come first with her. And she’d resent it, that it did come first with me. She’d have the right to resent it.” He gave a small snort. “I could only do it if I took a pack of them, like Robb, to be company for one another.”
“Seven forbid,” Mother said, picking up the joke he’d offered her. “One harem is more than enough for this keep.” But she heaved a small sigh, and looked at him with regret.
Sansa tried to share the feeling: Jon deserved his own family, after everything he’d gone through. But she couldn’t; there was only a huge selfish relief swelling in her. She was glad, desperately glad, that House Stark came first with him. She’d felt it, instinctively; she only now realized how much she ‘d already started to rely on it, on him, and she didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want him to marry Allinor Peake and have his own children—children that he’d surely love with all his heart, the way he loved Robb’s children. She was so glad he wasn’t going to.
But she also couldn’t help feeling like a selfish beast, being glad for something like that. She had to look away and take a few deep breaths to keep from going red with shame, and before she had collected herself, Mother was saying to Jon, “Then the two of you should join the dancing together. If you lead Sansa out, when you might easily have gone and asked her instead, it will be a gentle and courteous way to signal your lack of interest.”
She turned back and Jon was holding his hand out to her, smiling. She pushed aside the guilty feeling and smiled back and stood up with him to go and join the ranks forming for the dance. She noticed a moment too late that the musicians were striking up a set of Volantene dances. Jon threw her a look of dismay as he realized what he was in for: he’d barely even had a chance to see them danced yet, much less learn them himself. But everyone had already made room for them, just below Tommen and his partner Lady Gisele Mallister, so they just had to make the best of it; at least partners stayed together, and Volantene dances were mostly romping fun and you were meant to make up steps when it was your turn to go around on the outside.
But Jon was studying Robb and Goneril taking their turn with furious concentration, which was a terrible idea because Robb loved dancing and also showing off like mad—when it wasn’t anything useful for the kingdom, anyway—and Goneril was a slip of a girl and he could toss her around like a leaf. Sansa wanted to warn Jon off trying anything like it with her, but the music went into one of the whirling sections with the fast drumming just as it was their turn, and he couldn’t have heard her unless she’d shouted. And then he’d seized her by the waist and was swinging her up and around just as easily, so strong she couldn’t stop a small yelp of surprise, bracing herself on his shoulders. There was a half-guilty satisfaction glinting in his eye, as if he knew she wasn’t expecting it from him, and then swung her back down to guide her whirling all the way around him before he swung her up again.
Of course Robb saw him doing it, and naturally that meant he had to try and do him one better on the next turn; Goneril was lucky he didn’t turn her completely upside down. He gave Jon a panting grin as he swung her past, a challenge, and Jon looked at her, his brows raised to ask, and she narrowed her eyes at him mock-severely even as she gave him her hand, not really minding: it was like they were all children again, having a silly game in the yard. Jon grinned back a little sheepishly as he swung her up again, and then as he brought her back down he swung her around his body, turning with her twice without even letting her feet touch the floor before he was lifting her right back up again.
By the third time swinging around, her hair fell out of its carefully arranged heap of braids and coils, which had been meant to survive formal court dances and not the heat of battle, pins going tinkling to the ground. Jon looked down in dismay, hesitating, but she was laughing, breathless: it was like running with the wolves, and she shook her head at him, telling him not to care. Jon smiled back at her with his eyes bright, understanding, and swung her up and away into another wild whirling pass, not looking over at Robb anymore at all. Even the dance itself, moves and pattern, was slipping away in her head; they were just moving together for the sheer joy of it, leaping and turning around each other.
She didn’t want to stop at the end of the pass, and Jon didn’t either: she could feel the regret as he brought her down for a last time, his hands lingering on her waist a moment too long, wanting to lift her back up again, even though they were both completely out of breath, panting in gulps, and her hair really was a wreck, the braids all undone and tumbling loose around her, deeply indecorous. She took his hand to go back to the end of the line laughing at herself, at them both, and beamed over at him as they went, glowing all the way through with the fire of the dance. He looked back at her, his own face lit up, crinkling with happiness, and from one instant to the next she saw that same fire changing in him, his whole body gone taut and alert, hungry, and his hand tightened on hers a little.
She stopped with surprise. He’d frozen himself, staring at her, and then for a moment he was a man who’d walked into an unexpected danger, all the joy draining out of him, but in blind instinct she caught at it, caught at his hand with both of hers even as his grip started to loosen. They just stood there together, and he was gazing at her with a bewildered, almost disbelieving look coming into his face, the mirror of what she was feeling on her own. The next pair of dancers was darting sidelong looks at them as they went past to get back into the line, and she didn’t care; there were tears stinging in her eyes and her throat: a barred door suddenly swinging open, with sunlight and spring on the other side of it.
#
Robb wasn’t sure at first whether he’d taken too much drink the night before; he couldn’t make sense of what Jon was rambling on about. He couldn’t quite believe that Jon would really be asking him for a horse out of the Winterfell stables, as if he didn’t know he could take any one he liked any time he liked, but if that wasn’t what Jon was after, Robb didn’t know what he was asking for, and he was about to interrupt him bewildered when it suddenly dawned on him— “Are you asking me if you can marry Sansa?” he said, even more incredulous.
Jon turned red and began to stammer through what he seemed to think was making his case, but after only one more moment of surprise, Robb broke in on him at once. “What are you asking me for? I’m not trying to tell her what to do. Or is it that you haven’t managed to tell her that you want to marry her, and you want me to do it for you?” he added.
“What? No!” Jon said.
“I don’t know, if this is how you went on at her, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Robb said with a snort, and only grinned when Jon glared at him. “I thought you were asking if you could have that bay mare we got from Lord Harthorn!”
Jon put his hands over his face with a groan. “I didn’t know how to tell you!” he said, muffled.
“‘Robb, I’ve asked Sansa to marry me, and she’s said yes,’ that would’ve done!” Robb said. “Has she said yes?”
“I’d not be asking you if she hadn’t!” Jon said.
“Well, it’s all settled, then!” Robb said, smiling up at Jon helplessly. He hadn’t imagined such a match at all, but he was so happy for it he could burst: he’d understood for some time now, in sorrow, that Sansa had only been trying to make it easier for him and for Mother to bear, when she’d pretended to entertain one suit or another; that Joffrey had wounded her so badly that she’d never trust another man inside her guard again. But Jon—of course she could trust him, and of course the instant she’d given Jon a way into her heart, the heart of House Stark, he’d leapt for it.
Jon was beaming back at him, shining with his own happiness, and Robb rose to go round the desk and take him in his arms and pound his back and kiss his cheek; they held each other smiling, and then Robb straightened with a sudden dawning delight as he realized—he took Jon by the shoulder, grinning savagely, and started leading him to the door. “In fact, go tell her you’ll be married tomorrow!”
Jon gawked at him. “What? But—”
“Some of the guests haven’t left yet,” Robb said in gleeful vengeance, already thinking of just how much of a fuss he could arrange at short order. Surely Walda would manage something grand, if he begged her: a subtlety in the shape of all Winterfell, perhaps; and Vervain could dash off something. “We can’t pass up the chance to carry on the feasting a bit longer, can we? Make even more of a show of the strength of the North. It’s your duty to House Stark,” he added earnestly, as he guided Jon straight out the door and shut it in his dismayed face before he could manage to marshal any objections, and ran out the other way through the sitting room to go and rouse the whole household into action.
“Of course you didn’t want to neglect showing Sansa and Jon any honor,” Talisa said, in mild tones, from their seat at the high table, as the choir of sixty sweet-voiced boys and girls paraded in a circle throwing flowers—made of silk, since they hadn’t any real ones yet—upon the happy couple on the dais, which Robb had commanded put in the middle of the Great Hall, with all the other tables arranged around them.
“Of course not,” Robb said, in deep satisfaction, as the great fortress of pastry was carried out to them on a great plank by six men. When they cut into it with the sword that Jon was given, a full hundred starlings dyed in bright colors burst out into their faces squawking wildly—and went sailing around the hall in a panic, so all the guests began squawking too. The whole room descended into chaos, half of them diving beneath the tables to avoid having droppings land upon their fine clothes, and the drunker half applauding and cheering.
Robb had ordered a couple of pages to keep a cloak at the ready, and he and Talisa had ducked safely beneath it; as the pandemonium grew, he grinned out from under it in pure happiness in answer to the look Sansa gave him, even though it promised retribution.
“Oh, no,” Talisa said.
“Did one of them get you? It’s all right,” he said, still gleeful. “I’ll buy you a new gown.”
“It’s not my dress!” Talisa said. “The baby’s coming!”
“What?” He turned to her in horror. “Forget the cloak!” he ordered the pages. “Go get Maester Wornos, and Walda!” and beckoned to the guards standing unobtrusive a few steps behind the throne. “We’ll carry you upstairs—”
“No,” Talisa snarled at him through clenched teeth, all mildness gone; she was gripping tight onto his arm as she struggled up. “I mean, the baby’s coming,” and as she got out of the chair, a gush of waters came. She gave a strangled grunt, and in a panic he dived to a knee and got his hands beneath her as she was gasping; even as Walda was bustling over, anxious, saying, “Tali? Are you having pains?” she gave another cry and the baby came wet and slippery out in his hands.
“I’d say you deserved it, except Talisa didn’t,” Sansa said to him, as they all trooped back out together in their finery to take the boy to the godswood, a second trip in the same day. They could have waited until the next night, but the guests really were going now: Jaime and Brienne would be leaving for the south with the Lannister party in the morning, and Rickon and Lyanna returning to Bear Island with the Glovers and the Umbers; they hadn’t wanted to miss the naming. Talisa and the boy were both doing so well that Maester Wornos hadn’t any worries; she was even feeling well enough to come out with them.
“Oh, I deserved it!” Robb said. “Nine tapestries in silk thread, up and down the hall; giving a purse to have flattery sung at me! And I’m certain that between you and Jaime, every jongleur here has been paid to take that song up and down the whole realm. If I’d got a dragon inside the cake, it would’ve served you right.”
But he was too happy to truly be resentful. He came to the heart tree and stood waiting as all the others gathered around them: Mother on Arya’s arm, beside Jon and Bran in his chair, which Rickon had pushed easily out into the godswood; he and Lyanna were on his other side with Meera. Jaime and Brienne stood at the back. Nymeria was helping Talisa and scowling Yara off, who was smirking back at her, a hand on Rheon’s shoulder. Walda and Goneril were herding the rest of the pack of children: Wendel and Brynda had been promised they could come for this naming, along with the older three, so they’d been roused from their beds and were excited, and Brandon was loudly trying to boss the lot of them into a straight line, without much success. Robb grinned down at him, and looked to the shore as the wolves came trotting out of the trees having come the long way round; they sat up panting with their eyes gleaming in the torchlight.
Everyone fell quiet as Sansa raised her clear voice and said, “Who comes before the gods this night?”
Robb’s throat was tight as he looked around them all. The cold weather had truly broken; the icicles had been dripping all day for the whole week of feasting, and even though their breath was still frosting a little in the night air, it wasn’t bitter. The ice around the rim of the pond had begun to break up even just since the morning. For this one moment, winter was going, instead of coming, and his whole pack was gathered in the shelter of the walls of Winterfell. All of them safe together at last: the family he’d left home to save, the family he’d come home to build. All of them but one.
Robb swallowed a sharpness, something caught between joy and pain, and turning to face Sansa before the tree, he said softly, to her, to his family, to the gods, “I am Robb of House Stark, and I come to ask your blessing on my son—Eddard Stark.”