Lyanna, Dacey, and the retreating royalists broke camp before first light. The column moved quicker on drier ground as they veered north, away from the Blackwater. Villages showed more often but the villagers themselves were nowhere to be seen. Shutters were nailed shut and dogs didn't bark.
The road climbed through black pines and broke into open land. At the top of the next hill rose a towerhouse, but it paled in comparison to the size of the army camp beneath it. Below, fires pricked the shallow bowl of a valley. Banners lifted and fell in the thin wind: red spear and sun of Dorne, orange and white Lychester, black bat of Whent, a flaming lighthouse for Hightower. At the center, a big red pavilion anchored the lines.
"Sow's Horn," Connington said, and let out a breath he'd held a long time. "You'll have your talk."
Dacey edged her mare until her knee brushed Lyanna's shin. "I'm on your left," she said. "Say run if you mean it."
Lyanna nodded once. Above them, the white raven circled and then dropped to a pine at the valley's rim. He kept his beak shut. Even he understood the last stretch to a thing should be quiet.
They marched downhill to the fires of war. Drums beat a lazy cadence as they picked their way among cookfires and tether lines. Men turned to stare. Some made warding signs when they saw the stark white raven that had followed them this far. Connington ignored them, cutting a path toward a ring of officers' tents, then halted at a rope line manned by Whent spearmen.
"Prisoners for the prince," he told the sergeant. "Separate quarters. No visitors without my word."
Lyanna took in the layout while they waited. Latrines dug on the slope. Horse lines along the creek. A field altar with seven crude statues, new clay drying in the cold. The red pavilion rose at the center like a heart in a chest. Runners came and went with slates, each marked with a different sigil in chalk.
They were shown to a wedge tent twenty paces from the command ring, near a stack of barley sacks and a cook pit. Two Whent men cut their bonds and shoved them inside. Connington lingered in the door.
"There is food and drink inside," he said. "If you try to escape I will post archers and be done with gentleness." His gaze moved to Dacey and held there. "Lady Mormont, do not test me."
"I won't," Dacey said. "Not yet."
When the flap dropped, she let out a breath and crouched at the slit seam to study the angle to the guards. Above, canvas snapped taut with the wind. Outside, a pot cracked, someone cursed, a horse stamped.
Lyanna felt trapped by the walls of the tent, but she took a deep breath. I am more than a helpless maiden, she reminded herself. She brushed her fingers along the torcs on her wrist and the necklace around her throat. I am a knight of the green men and protector of the singers. The confines of this tent are nothing for me.
"He will go to the prince now," Lyanna said.
"Then you go with him," Dacey answered, and turned to check Lyanna's face. "I'll keep watch."
Lyanna laid down on the rough mat and slowed her breathing. She found the living quiet she had learned on the Isle, the space between heartbeats where the world tipped open. When she slipped, it was clean. The tent fell away. Hooves. Smell of damp canvas. The shiver of a fly on Winter's withers.
She stood, not on two legs but four, and quietly made her way out of the stable. Green flickers touched the ground before her. Each outline was a ghost-step she could choose or refuse. She chose the safe paths. A cook turned with a ladle; she paused. A sentry looked left; she moved right. Winter's breath smoked in the cold as she ghosted beneath the guide ropes of the red pavilion.
Lamplight leaked through a seam at the back and painted the grass a thin gold. Wax and wool scented the air inside. Lyanna could hear the map pins that clinked when a hand brushed the table.
Two heartbeats matched there. Close. Slow. Breath on breath.
Lyanna edged forward and set her muzzle to the lower tie. The knot smelled of oil and many fingers. A soft pull loosened it enough to open a thumb's width. Warm light touched her eye. She saw a pale hand rise to a jaw. One man's mouth meet another's. They joined without haste and stayed bound.
Then leather creaked at the tent's entrance. Spurs ticked a stone. Connington. The canvas lifted. Cold air flowed in around his legs, and the kiss inside ended on a breath that did not quite become a sigh.
She watched Connington stop, annoyed but seemingly unsurprised. His weight shifted forward, then checked. He held his helm tight so it would not fall. The other man opened his eyes. He rested his brow to the prince's for a blink, then stepped aside with a soldier's care.
"Jon," spoke one voice, smooth as still water. She recognized it with shock as Prince Rhaegar.
"I brought the men to you as quickly as I could manage," Connington answered. His voice was sanded down to duty. He set the helm on the table, then spoke of a battle lost. The tall knight listened silently behind the prince.
"…not a rout," Connington said, crisp, tired. "A withdrawal. The bells called the town to arms. Baratheon fought like a storm. We could not dig him out before the lords rallied."
When the report ended, the prince crossed the rugs. His palm met Connington's shoulder. Gratitude warmed the air. "You brought me what matters," he said.
Arthur Dayne spoke next, quieter still. "We must speak of Elia before anything else."
"We will," Rhaegar said. "Our enemies will cry about my second wife, so I need the High Septon. Jon, send a fast rider to the Great Sept of Baelor. I will be wed by law. The song demands three, and I will not tempt it with half measures. I need my Visenya."
Connington hesitated. "Your wife lives."
"She lives," Rhaegar agreed, and brushed past the fact as if it were a gnat. "And yet the realm must live also. It needs an ending that begins right. Snow to temper fire. Steel that will not shatter."
Arthur's voice held a thread of iron. "Elia is not a parchment to file away. Dorne is not clay to press into your vision."
Rhaegar touched Arthur's wrist with a familiarity that did not belong in a war tent. "I know what I ask," he said, eyes bright. "I would not ask if the stakes were less."
Connington cleared his throat. "There are supply matters."
"In the morning," Rhaegar said. "Tonight I must dream, and see tomorrow early if the gods are kind."
Arthur turned. The hem of his cloak stirred the dust. He took a step outside the tent and stopped, gaze catching on the odd stillness of a lone gray horse beyond the canvas walls.
"Whose is that?" he asked, and the guard at the flap started as if slapped.
The guardsmen reached out to take the reins in hand. "I'll return this stray immediately, Your Grace."
Lyanna slid back into her own body. She opened her eyes to Dacey's palm ready to cover her mouth if she startled.
"Six minutes and a half," Dacey said. "You owe me a story."
Lyanna told it in short pieces while she drank, and Dacey listened without comment until the end. "He wants you in a sept before his breakfast," she said. "Good. If he's that urgent, he's blind on his flanks."
Lyanna pressed her palms together and felt the roughness from training, the new calluses she had earned. "He believes the future will be bright if I am a door he opens."
"Then we make him walk through a different door," Dacey said, grim and almost pleased. "We can bait it with the words he wants."
The flap shivered. Dijkstra thrust his head through without ceremony and hopped in. The Whent guards did not seem to bar wildlife.
"Many tents," he announced. "Many opinions. The cooks favor pork. The Dornish favor quiet knives. The Lychesters favor shouting. I favor fish."
Dacey tossed him a shrimp from their unfinished dinner. "We favor peace."
"Peace is not on the menu," Dijkstra said, and swallowed the seafood whole. "Riders went northwest with neat little orders, and a great deal of gold. One goes south for a fat holy man who likes to be carried."
Lyanna wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and pulled writing implements onto the table. "Then we must act before that fat man ties me down. How about we share a verse that sounds like truth?"
Dacey sat with her back to the pole, eyes on the entrance. "Make it clear, prophecies are always too confusing," she said. "And make it pretty. Men remember pretty lies longer."
"To sell this future, a bit of theatre could help." Lyanna suggested. "Dijkstra, care to expand your pranking to the realm of prophecy?"
Dijkstra clicked his beak. "I can be wise and holy." He hopped to the pole, fluffed once, then caught himself.
Lyanna's quill scratched ideas onto parchment.
She turned her head toward Dacey. "If this fails, we run."
"If this fails," Dacey clarified, "we break his nose and run. It's about time someone knocked that prince down a peg."
Lyanna almost smiled. "Old Gods," she whispered, not loud enough to carry beyond cloth, "let this lie hold until the truth can stand."
Outside, the harp found a melody. The song did not sound like destiny. It sounded like a man practicing because he could not sleep.