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Jon Snow
Jon hated the wheelhouse.
Not the wheelhouse itself, which was a modest thing by southern standards, oak-paneled, iron-rimmed wheels, curtains of Stark grey that Sansa had tied back so she could see the city. He hated that he was riding beside it instead of ahead of it. He hated the slow, measured walk of the courser beneath him, the way every jolt of the cobblestones sent a dull ache radiating from his ribs through his chest and into his teeth. He hated that Lord Stark had positioned him in the middle of the column instead of the front, flanked by Alyn on his left and Harwin on his right, like a lord being shepherded through hostile country.
Which, he supposed, was exactly what he was.
The horse was a gentle bay mare with soft gaits and absolutely no ambition. The kind of horse you put a child on, or a grandmother, or a young man with three broken ribs and a shoulder held together by spite and bandages.
He was a good rider. Better than good. At Winterfell, he'd ridden with Robb through the Wolfswood at full gallop, weaving between birch trunks, jumping deadfall, racing until the horses foamed and the cold air burned their lungs raw. He'd trained on horseback with a lance since he was ten, taken falls that would have broken lesser riders, gotten back on before the dust settled. Riding was the one thing that had always come to him as naturally as breathing.
Now breathing itself was a negotiation, and the mare walked like she was carrying eggs.
If I kicked her into a canter right now, I'd last about four strides before my ribs punched through my lungs, Jon thought sourly. Five if I held my breath. Six if the gods were feeling generous, which they never are.
He shifted in the saddle and winced. The leather creaked.
"Stop fidgeting," Ned said from the horse beside him. He rode a tall grey gelding, Ice strapped across his back in its wolf-skin scabbard. "You'll pull something."
"I've already pulled everything. There's nothing left to pull."
"Then you'll re-pull it."
"That's not a word."
"It is now."
Jon smiled a little. Lord Stark wasn't one to joke often, but it felt like his...uncle had started because of his wounds.
Behind them, the wheelhouse rattled along. Through the tied-back curtains, Jon could hear Sansa explaining the finer points of tournament etiquette to Jeyne Poole, who was asking questions at a rate that suggested she'd prepared a list. Arya was in there too, though Jon hadn't heard her voice in several minutes, which either meant she was asleep or plotting something. Lady padded alongside the wheelhouse, her golden eyes sweeping the crowd. The direwolf was enormous now, her shoulder level with the wheelhouse axle, her grey-brown fur thick and lustrous. Smallfolk pointed and whispered when she passed. Children pressed against their mothers' legs.
Jon let his gaze drift as they moved through the Street of Seeds toward the tourney grounds. The city was alive around them, vendors and beggars and tradesmen all flowing in the same direction, drawn by the promise of spectacle. The smell was King's Landing at its ripest. Bunting hung from windows, Baratheon gold and black, mostly, though Jon spotted a few Tyrell roses, the Trout of House Tully, but no lion of House Lannister.
His mind wandered south and then north, pulled by something stronger than the tournament.
The letters.
They were in Winterfell. His mother's handwriting. Her words.
Jon had been turning it over all morning. He knew what the letters would contain in practical terms: names, dates, a record of the marriage ceremony, perhaps details about the annulment of Rhaegar's first marriage or the septon who blessed the second. Evidence.
But that wasn't what kept pulling at him.
Did she write about me?
Not as a political fact. Not as "the child" or "the heir" or "the prince." Did Lyanna Stark, dying in a tower in Dorne with blood on the bed and dead roses in her hands, find time between the proof and the politics to write something that was just... for him?
Did she say she loved me? Did she put it down in ink, in her own hand, so that someday I could hold the paper and know?
He didn't know what her handwriting looked like. He didn't know if she wrote in a careful, practiced hand or a wild scrawl. He didn't know if she pressed hard with the quill or barely touched the parchment. These were small things, stupid things, things that shouldn't matter, and they were all he could think about.
Did she describe how she met him? Did she write about Harrenhal, about the tourney, about the moment she looked at Rhaegar Targaryen and saw something that made her throw away the entire world?
Jon wanted to read those words so badly.
Last night, he'd dreamed of her again.
Before the Godswood, his mother had always appeared in shadow. A shape in a doorway, a voice without a face. He'd spent years dreaming of her that way, waking up with the feeling of her lingering like perfume in an empty room.
Last night had been different. The shadows had pulled back. Not all the way, not enough to see her clearly, but enough. He'd caught the outline of dark hair, the impression of a jaw that might have been stubborn, a mother's smile. She was closer than she'd ever been, and still he couldn't quite see her.
She was alone, he thought, and the thought made him feel cold. All this time, she was alone. In the crypts. In the cold and the dark. Stone and silence and the weight of the mountain above her.
Jon had spent fourteen years in Winterfell wondering who his mother was, and she had spent those same fourteen years lying beneath the castle where he slept. Right there. Underneath his feet. Close enough that if stone weren't stone, he might have heard her.
Did she feel it? he wondered, and knew the question was foolish, knew the dead felt nothing, but asked it anyway. Those nights when I was small, when the cold came through the walls and I had no mother to hold me, when Catelyn Stark's eyes cut through me at the dinner table and I went to bed wishing I could disappear, was it cold for you too, down there? Were you alone the way I was alone?
His throat tightened. He swallowed against it and stared at the mare's mane.
I'll read her letters. I'll learn her handwriting. I'll know what she thought of me. And then I'll stand in front of her tomb and I'll tell her... I'll tell her I turned out alright. That Lord Stark kept his promise. That her son lived.
"Jon."
Lord Stark's voice. Jon blinked and realized his eyes were wet. He drew a breath, held it, let it go. Looked at his uncle.
Ned said nothing. Just held his gaze for a moment then turned to look forward again.
The street widened as they neared the tourney grounds, the crowd thickening around them. Stark guards formed a loose perimeter, and Lady's presence kept most people at a respectful distance. But Jon noticed, as the column slowed to navigate a bottleneck near a fruit seller's cart, that people were looking at him.
A woman with flour on her apron stopped mid-conversation and stared. A boy perched on a barrel craned his neck, eyes wide. Two men carrying a rolled carpet between them paused and one elbowed the other, pointing.
Jon knew what they were looking at... the fool who attacked a Mountain... and almost reached for his hood before remembering he wasn't wearing one.
Then a man stepped forward.
The Stark guards tensed. Alyn's hand went to his sword. Harwin shifted his horse to block the approach. But the man wasn't armed. He was past forty, with a face like crumpled leather and the thick forearms of a smith or a mason. He wore a stained apron over roughspun and his boots were caked with mud.
He looked up at Jon. Took in the crutch strapped to the saddle, the bandages visible at his collar, the stitches above his eyebrow. Then his eyes met Jon's, and the man's weathered face split into a grin that was missing two teeth.
"It's him," the man said, loud enough for the street to hear. "The lad who blinded the Mountain."
Jon did not expect to hear that.
"Gods bless you, boy." The man's voice was rough with feeling. "That bastard burned my brother's farm in the Westerlands. Killed his dogs. Would've killed his children if they hadn't run." He reached up and gripped the edge of Jon's stirrup, holding it like a railing. "You took his eye. You're the first man who ever made that monster bleed."
"I—" Jon started.
He didn't finish, because more of them were coming.
A woman pushed through the crowd with a baby on her hip and tears already forming. "Ser, my husband served in Lord Piper's levy. Gregor Clegane killed twelve of his men at Greengrass Woods. My husband lost three fingers and can't hold a plow no more." She reached for Jon's hand, and before he could react, she'd pressed her lips to his knuckles. "Bless you. Bless your sword arm and your courage."
"I'm not a ser," Jon said, stupidly, because it was the only thing his mouth could find.
A young man, barely older than Jon, dropped to one knee in the street. "The Mountain that Rides, they call him!" He looked at his companions, three other young men with the rough hands of laborers. "You are the Blinder of Mountain."
"The Blinder of—" Jon shook his head. "That's not my—"
An old woman reached past the guards and touched the hilt of Jon's sword, murmuring a prayer under her breath. A father lifted his son onto his shoulders so the boy could see. "Look," the father said, pointing. "That's the one. The wolf who took the Mountain's eye. Remember his face."
The crowd was pressing closer now. Alyn and Harwin had their hands on their swords, but there was no threat here, just bodies, dozens of them, smallfolk with calloused hands and hungry faces and a desperate need to touch something that had fought back against the thing they feared.
"The Mountain killed my cousin at Sherrer."
"Burned the village of Wendish Town, every building."
"My daughter, she... the soldiers, his soldiers, they—" The woman couldn't finish. She just gripped Jon's stirrup and wept.
Jon sat frozen on his gentle mare, a boy of fourteen with stitches in his face and a name he'd learned two nights ago, and he did not know what to do with any of this. These people weren't looking at his purple eyes. They weren't looking at a Targaryen or a bastard or a political piece on someone's board. They were looking at a boy who had stabbed a monster in the eye and lived, and that was enough. That was everything.
He looked at Ned.
His uncle sat his grey gelding with his back straight and his face unreadable, but Jon saw it in his eyes, there was pride. The crowd parted for the Lord Hand's horse, but their eyes stayed on Jon.
"Why?" Jon asked quietly, so only Ned could hear. "Why are they doing this? What am I to them?"
Ned was quiet for a moment, watching the crowd. Then he turned to Jon, and his grey eyes held a steadiness.
"You are a good man, Jon. And that in this city...is a miracle."
The tourney grounds sprawled across the fields south of the city walls like a canvas town that had sprouted overnight. Pavilions in every color crowded the flat earth, silk and wool and oiled canvas, pennants snapping in the warm breeze, ropes creaking as servants hauled tent poles higher.
Jon reined the mare to a stop near the outer ring of pavilions where the Stark guards had cleared a space. The column had reformed after the crowd on the street, and he could still feel the ghost pressure of that woman's lips on his knuckles, the weight of the old man's grip on his stirrup.
The Blinder of the Mountain, he hoped that name wouldn't stick.
The dismount was the problem.
Jon had thought about it for the entire last stretch of the ride. Right foot out of the stirrup first. Swing the leg over. Lower himself on the left side, taking his weight on his good arm, bending his knees to absorb the drop. Simple. He'd dismounted ten thousand times in his life. He could do it with his eyes closed.
He could not, as it turned out, do it with three broken ribs and a shoulder that had been rearranged by Gregor Clegane.
His right foot cleared the stirrup cleanly. He swung his leg over the mare's rump and shifted his weight, and his ribs screamed. White light flashed behind his eyes. His left arm buckled, fingers slipping on the pommel, and for one horrible moment he was going to fall. He was going to land flat on his back in the dirt in front of the entire Stark household and half the tourney grounds, and Sansa would scream, and Arya would laugh, and the story would reach the Great Hall by nightfall.
Something warm and solid pressed against his hip.
Jon's hand found fur and gripped. Lady stood braced against his left side like a living buttress, her shoulder wedged under his arm, her legs planted wide. She didn't move. Just held him there, steady as a stone wall, while Jon found his feet and let his weight settle and remembered how to breathe.
He looked down at her.
Lady looked up at him. Her golden eyes looked at him as if asking if he was feeling alright, and her mouth was open just slightly, her tongue showing, and Jon could have sworn that the direwolf was smiling at him.
"Thank you," he murmured, scratching behind her ear.
Lady's tail swayed once, a sweep that said You're welcome, but do try to manage next time. Then she turned and padded back to the wheelhouse, where Sansa was climbing down with Jeyne's help, and took her place at her mistress's side as though she'd never moved.
Jon grabbed his crutches from the saddle and settled them under his arms. His ribs throbbed. His pride throbbed worse.
Alyn appeared at his shoulder. "Nobody saw, m'lord."
"Everyone saw."
"Aye. But they'll pretend they didn't. Northmen are good at that."
Lord Stark dismounted. He checked the girth straps, handed the reins to a groom, and surveyed the grounds.
"You have time before the jousting begins," Ned said, looking between Jon, Sansa, and Arya. "You may explore, but you stay with the guards. All five of them. Lady stays with you at all times." His gaze lingered on Arya. "At all times, Arya."
"I heard you the first time."
"I'm saying it twice because I know you."
Arya crossed her arms but didn't argue.
"Before the first lance breaks, you are in our box. I will be waiting." He looked at Jon. "If anything —"
"I know," Jon said. "I'll bring them back."
Ned seemed relieved, then turned and walked toward the main arena entrance, Jory falling into step beside him. Jon watched him go, the wolf-skin scabbard of Ice visible across his back, and thought: He walks like a man going to war, not a tournament.
"Come on," Arya said, already moving. "I want to see the horses."
They walked.
The five Stark guards spread into a loose cordon around them and Lady padded at Sansa's heel with her ears pricked and her golden eyes sweeping every face that came too close. The tourney grounds were a maze of tent ropes and wagon ruts, and Jon navigated it on his crutches with what he hoped was quiet dignity but suspected was more of a determined hobble.
Pavilions stretched in every direction, organized loosely by region. The Stormlords clustered near the eastern edge, their yellow and black banners snapping alongside sigils Jon half-remembered from Maester Luwin's lessons: the stag of Baratheon, the lightning bolt of Dondarrion, the foxes of Florent. The Reach houses dominated the central rows, roses and huntsmen and the red apple of Fossoway. A cluster of Riverlander tents sat near the water troughs.
Jon scanned every pennant, every sigil, every scrap of colored fabric.
No sun. No spear. No orange and red.
He looked again, slower this time, his eyes moving tent by tent along the southern row where the Dornish contingent should have been. He found a Dayne tent, a falling star in purple on a field of lavender, and his stomach lurched at the sight of it before he realized it was occupied by a hedge knight who'd bought the pavilion secondhand. Beyond it, nothing. Empty grass where more tents could have stood.
No Martells.
If the girl was Rhaenys, if his half-formed, desperate theory held any water at all, the Martells would have been the ones to hide her. Elia's family. Oberyn had been at the tourney, had approached Jon before the melee with those knowing dark eyes and his veiled warnings. But Oberyn traveled light, a viper without a tent, and the rest of House Martell hadn't come to King's Landing at all.
She could be anywhere. She could be no one. She could be dead and I dreamed the whole thing.
But RedHeart had purred for her. And dragons didn't lie.
"Jon." Sansa's hand touched his arm. "Look."
She was pointing toward a pavilion that needed no identifying banner, though it had several. Green silk with golden roses embroidered along the tent poles, the flaps tied back to reveal a carpeted interior where servants moved between polished armor stands and tables laden with food. The Tyrell rose flew from every rope and ridge.
"Can we go over?" Sansa asked, sounding very excited. "Since you know Ser Loras."
Jon adjusted his crutches. "We can go over."
They approached the Tyrell pavilion. Two guards in green cloaks with rose-shaped clasps stood at the entrance, hands resting on the pommels of their swords. They were tall, clean-shaven, and looked like they'd been selected for the post based on the straightness of their jaws.
The taller one stepped forward. "My lords, my ladies. Do you have business with House Tyrell?"
"I'm Jon Snow," Jon said. "I'd like to see Loras, if he's here. He'll want to know I've come."
The guard studied Jon for a moment, took in the crutches, the stitches, the purple eyes, and recognition flickered across his face. He'd heard the name. Everyone in King's Landing had heard the name after the melee.
"Wait here," he said, and ducked inside.
Three seconds passed. Maybe four.
Then the tent flap was thrown back and Loras Tyrell emerged like the sun stepping out of a cloud, already smiling, brown curls bouncing, and wearing a doublet of pale green silk.
"Jon!" Loras's face lit with genuine delight. He crossed the distance, arms opening, then he saw the crutches and the bandages and checked himself, recalibrating mid-approach. He wrapped Jon in a hug so careful it was almost comical, one arm barely touching Jon's back, the other hovering near his good shoulder.
"Gently," Loras murmured. "I'm hugging you gently. Tell me if I'm hurting you."
"You're barely touching me."
"Good. That's the idea." Loras pulled back but kept his hands on Jon's shoulders, studying his face. The smile faded into something more serious. "How are you? Truly?"
"I'm better," Jon said. "Truly. I can stand, walk, and sit without screaming. I consider that progress."
Loras's smile returned, softer this time. "I'll take it." His eyes moved to the group behind Jon, and his eyebrows rose. "And you've brought company."
"Loras, this is my sister, Sansa." Jon gestured. Sansa stepped forward with a curtsy so polished Jon suspected she'd been practicing it in mirrors. "And my sister Arya." Arya gave an awkward half-bow that looked like she'd invented it on the spot. "And Jeyne Poole, a friend of Sansa's."
Jeyne made a strangled noise that might have been a greeting.
"Ladies." Loras offered a bow that was graceful enough to make Sansa's cheeks flush pink. "It's a pleasure. Jon speaks very highly of you both."
"He does?" Sansa asked, too quickly.
"He does," Loras confirmed. "Though he forgot to mention that beauty runs in the Stark family."
Sansa turned the color of a pomegranate.
Arya looked at Jon. "Does he always talk like that?"
"Unfortunately," Jon said.
"It's a gift," Loras corrected, grinning.
A rustle of silk behind Loras, and another figure emerged from the tent.
Margaery Tyrell stepped into the sunlight. She wore a gown of pale blue, her chestnut hair falling in loose waves over her shoulders, a single golden rose pinned above her left ear. Her smile was beautiful.
Jon had seen Margaery before. He'd noted her the way you note any pretty girl in a castle full of them, briefly, and then moved on.
He wasn't moving on now.
She was beautiful. Not in the sharp, dangerous way Cersei was beautiful. Margaery's beauty was warmer than that, softer, like a warm hug. Her brown eyes were bright and clever and amused.
"It's good to met you again, Jon Snow," she said softly, and Jon felt a rush of warmth on his face.
"Me too, My Lady."
"Margaery, please. Any friend of my brother's." Her eyes swept over him, the crutches, the stitches, the bandages, and landed on his face with interest. "Is a friend of House Tyrell."
Before Jon could respond, one of the Tyrell guards near the tent entrance stiffened. Lady had padded forward, following Sansa, and the direwolf's sheer size had drawn the guard's attention like a drawn sword.
"You." The guard stepped forward, hand dropping to his blade, his gaze pinning Jon. "Tell your beast to back off, or I'll cut it down where it stands."
Sansa moved before Jon could speak, stepping in front of Lady with her chin raised and her blue eyes blazing. "Lady is not a beast. She is my pet and she would never harm anyone who didn't threaten her family."
"Pet or not, it's too close to —"
"She," Sansa corrected, her voice trembling with anger now. "Lady is a she, not an it."
The guard opened his mouth, face reddening —
"Tommen." Margaery's voice made the guard stop. The guard turned. "That will do."
The guard shut his mouth.
Margaery turned to Sansa with an expression of delight, and all the tension on Sansa's shoulders disappeared, and she smiled back at Margaery. "A wolf," Margaery said. "I've read about them, you know, but I never imagined I'd see one in person." She took a step closer, her eyes on Lady. "May I approach her?"
Sansa blinked, caught off guard by the shift. "I — yes, of course. Lady, come."
Lady padded forward and sat primly beside Sansa, her great plumed tail curling around her haunches. She regarded Margaery with calm golden eyes, her head tilted slightly, ears pricked forward.
"May I touch her?" Margaery asked.
Sansa straightened, and Jon saw a flash of pride cross her face. "She's a direwolf, my lady. Not a wolf. Direwolves are —"
She stopped. Color flooded her cheeks. "I'm sorry. You probably know the difference. I didn't mean to correct you, Lady Margaery."
Margaery's smile widened. "Margaery. And please, correct me. I want to know everything. I've never met a direwolf before. I want to get it right."
Sansa stared at her for a moment, and Jon watched something happen on his sister's face; she was looking at Margaery like she was suddenly her best friend.
"You can touch her," Sansa said. "She's very gentle."
Margaery knelt. The pale blue gown pooled around her on the grass, and she extended her hand, palm up. Lady sniffed her fingers. A moment passed. Then the direwolf leaned forward and pressed her great head into Margaery's palm.
"Oh," Margaery breathed. Her fingers sank into the thick fur behind Lady's ears, and the direwolf's eyes half-closed. "She's beautiful. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever touched."
Sansa's whole face changed. "She likes you."
"I like her." Margaery scratched deeper, and Lady's tail thumped against the ground once, twice. "Does she hunt?"
"She could. She's trained, mostly. But she still has the instincts."
Jon glanced at Loras, who was watching his sister work with an expression that mixed fondness with resignation.
"She does this," Loras said quietly, leaning toward Jon. "My sister is...very friendly."
Jon looked back at Margaery kneeling in the grass with a direwolf's head in her lap, and Sansa standing above her looking happier than she had since they'd left Winterfell.
"Well, better have friends than enemies." Jon muttered, and Loras nodded in agreement.
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