Eddard Stark sat beneath Riverrun's trout banners and tried to taste his supper. The meat was well roasted, the onions sweet, the ale fresh. Yet the taste of dinner was buried by the turmoil raging in his heart.
Stained glass depictions of the seven gods formed a window at the end of the hall. Their panes threw soft colors across the shining dinner plates and carving knives. The glow reached for Ned's hands like something that wanted to claim him. He could not look at it long. Riverrun's heart tree rose in his mind. Bark pale as bone. Red eyes like fresh sap.
He had taken vows in that place. He had taken them again yesterday in this one. The room cheered when he kissed his bride. Hoster beamed. Jon Arryn clapped him on the shoulder and called it prudence. The Riverlands would march with the North and the Vale. A wolf had joined a trout for alliance, the lords said. Ned drank and nodded and kept his jaw set so his teeth would not show.
He had thought of Ashara in the sept without meaning to. The memory came the way a blade's edge finds a thumb when you clean it without paying heed. Her grace at Harrenhal. Her hand in his at the heart tree in Riverrun's godswood. The moonlight on her hair when they had spoken of Starfall and grain. She had been kind. She had been sure. He had promised.
Then ravens came with a different reckoning. The Mad King had burned Rickard Stark alive and strangled Brandon. The realm waited for a word from lords who still had spines. Jon Arryn said the people needed a chain to hold in the storm. A wedding made a chain. Hoster spoke of bridges and oaths and the blades of the Riverlands, which were many. Ned heard his father's voice as if it rose from the cold ground. Duty. Winter. The pack keeps the pack alive.
Yesterday he had gone to the sept with lead in his gut. Catelyn's hands did not shake. She had looked at him with love and longing he failed to match. He had kissed her because the priest nodded, and because Hoster watched, and because Jon Arryn's approval had the weight of iron behind it.
Afterward, he had stood alone in the yard until the drifts of breath left his mouth steady again.
Today the hall ate and laughed. Jon Arryn kept his plate neat and his counsel neater. Edmure tried to be everywhere at once. Mormont men near the lower tables drank without joy. The Blackwoods said little and saw much. A Bracken retainer counted spoons with his eyes. It was a normal feast before a march, the kind he would have known at home, if not for the river flags and the music of the south.
Ned's thoughts were interrupted when a minstrel shouldered the door with a flourish and waved a familiar face inside.
The man bowed as if a king waited on the dais. "My lords, my thanks for this fine feast. I am Tom o' Sevenstreams, minstrel extraordinaire," he called, easy as a man greeting friends. "I bring a harp for your hearts and a guest for your table. Howland of Greywater Watch." Heads turned. A few smiles answered. Most of the room went on eating.
Tom o' Sevenstreams slipped to the minstrels and lifted a tune with the flourish of a man who knew how to set a hall at ease. "Jenny of Oldstones" wound through the hum of voices and drew them lower. Ned felt the song in his bones. It stirred up emotions the solemn Stark yearned to bury. It spoke of a love that did not fit rooms like this.
Ned looked down the tables again and found a small man patently standing by the door. There was mud on his boots and he wore cloak that had seen the road. A face Ned remembered from a tourney field and a godswood that smelled of wet earth. Howland Reed. Relief and dread hit him in the same breath. If Howland stood here, then Lyanna… he did not let the thought finish. Howland met his eyes and bowed his head once.
Ned pushed back his chair. "Father," he said without thinking, and caught the empty word. Jon Arryn turned anyway. "My lord," Ned corrected, voice steady. "I will speak with Greywater's man."
Jon Arryn's glance measured Howland from crown to sole in the space of a breath. "Be quick," he said, mild as always. "Dawn is not far."
Catelyn's hand left Ned's wrist, then returned as if it had learned the shape of his bones already.
"You will come back," she said. Not a question. Not a command. A simple hope.
"I will," he said, and stood.
He crossed the hall with the awareness that men watched him the way dogs watch a gate. Tom's song drew to a soft refrain that left room for voices. Ned did not hear them. He heard the slap of his own pulse.
When he reached the pillar, Howland inclined his head. No more than that. They did not clasp forearms. They did not speak each other's names like boys after a long hunt. Ned felt a tightness in his throat at the memory of that boyhood, then set it aside.
"My lord," Howland said. "I ask a moment. For truth, not for wine."
"Come," Ned said.
They stepped under a side arch where the stone held the river's chill and the lantern's colored light could not reach. The hall went on behind them, a living thing that could feed armies with noise alone. Ned kept his back to it and waited for the words he feared, and wanted, in the same breath.
Howland did not waste any. "Lyanna was not taken at Harrenhal," he said. "Not by the prince. Not until later, if at all. A lie walks faster than a rider. Men here help it. Hoster and Jon Arryn plan rescues for a story that serves their lines. You married yesterday to feed that story."
Ned's mouth was dry. "You say this in a Tully hall," he said carefully.
"I say it to you," Howland answered. "Because your vows at the heart tree matter to you. Because you will not choose the easy lie if the hard truth stands before you. Your sister went to the Isle of Faces of her own will. She walked where the trees still speak. She left letters. The theft came after the tale had already taken root, and the fire of violence blazed."
Ned felt the ground shift under him. The tune in the hall pressed against the arch like a tide. "I married for her," he said. He tasted the word. It was lead, heavy and toxic. "The sept heard me."
"The old gods heard you first," Howland said. He did not raise his voice. He did not fold his arms. He let the words be as they were.
"You broke one vow for another and called it duty. I understand why, but I do not excuse it. The trees do not either."
Ned closed his eyes for the space of a breath. Ashara's face rose. Catelyn's followed. Lyanna's came last, fierce and young and stubborn, and it stayed.
"Where is she now," he asked.
"Not here," Howland said. "But safe enough to reach if you stop marching to the music of men who use her name to set their pieces. There is talk of bells on the Blackwater. There is talk of a southern host in the field. I came to put the truth in your hands before rumor hardens around it."
Ned opened his eyes. He saw Jon Arryn at the high table, calm as a winter sky. He saw Hoster Tully, injured but determined. He saw Catelyn's profile turn toward them, her expression composed, her eyes on him. Duty tore at him from two directions. He felt thinner for the pull, but he did not fall.