Rumors reached Winterfell before the goods did.
At first, it was not such an extraordinary tale.
They said White Harbor had begun making glass.
Not by remelting and cutting panes imported from Myr, but by starting with sand and ash and making it from the beginning.
That alone was enough to make Rickard Stark take notice. White Harbor was the North's largest port, and the place most frequented by ships from the south and the Free Cities. It would not have been wholly strange if a Myrish craftsman had drifted in, an apprentice had fled with his trade secrets in exchange for coin, or part of some long-hidden method had reached the North by an unexpected path.
So he ordered it investigated.
The trouble came afterward.
They said the one who had brought the new method was neither a Myrish craftsman nor an apprentice bought with coin.
It was a child.
Three years old.
When Rickard first heard that, he did not even look up from his letter.
"Verify it."
That was all he said to Maester Walys.
A three-year-old had made glass.
In a world where merchants attached two tales to every piece of merchandise and sailors made the waves twice as high before crossing a single harbor, it was hardly a story worth taking seriously.
A young child had been frequently visiting a glass workshop.
He had said a few strange things.
Around that same time, the craftsmen had discovered a new method.
Once such facts passed through a few mouths, several days were enough for them to become a tale about a three-year-old genius turning sand into glass.
That was what Rickard had thought.
Yet the rumor did not disappear.
Rather, the more it was investigated, the more needless parts fell away and the clearer its shape became.
The child's name was Daemon.
An outsider who had crossed the sea with his mother.
Before he turned his hand to glass, he had apparently begun heating rooms in several White Harbor homes by a method unlike the old one. Then, backed by Wyman Manderly, he entered a glass workshop, and after months of clashing with craftsmen and suffering repeated failures, he had succeeded in making glass from raw materials.
The first pieces had been dreadful.
They were dark green and full of bubbles, and even flattening them had been difficult.
But they continued to improve.
They made panes fit for windows.
They made sheets suitable for small mirrors as well.
Even when the speakers changed, that order scarcely did.
So Rickard believed it—and investigated further.
He questioned merchants who traveled to and from White Harbor, and had inquiries made among men who did not trade directly with the Manderlys. He compared the accounts carried by northern knights and riders. He looked to see whether people who did not know one another spoke the same words about the same details.
Then, not long afterward.
A chest bearing the Manderly seal arrived at Winterfell.
*
It was late afternoon when they opened it.
The winter sunlight had already taken on a bluish cast, and beyond the thick castle walls, the wind moaned low. Logs still burned in the hearth, but they were not enough to warm even the stone floor of the chamber completely.
The chest was made of stout timber bound in iron bands, its interior packed tightly with straw and wool.
Walys removed the final cloth.
A single sheet of glass was revealed.
Rickard did not reach for it at once.
He watched it for a moment.
Only then did he carefully lift it and tilt it toward the window.
He could see Walys on the other side.
He could see the desk as well.
He could make out the sword hanging on the wall and the books upon the shelf.
But it was not clear.
There was the faintest tinge of green, and a few small bubbles remained when one looked closely. Its thickness was not wholly even either, so the outlines of objects bent slightly near the edges.
"Is this the article in question?"
"It is."
"Made in White Harbor?"
"Yes."
"Are you certain?"
Walys had expected the question.
"House Manderly vouches for it."
Rickard merely raised his eyes to him.
Walys continued at once.
"I verified it separately as well, including merchants who trade with White Harbor but are not directly employed by the Manderlys. Few have witnessed the entire process inside the workshop, but their testimony agrees that raw glass is truly being produced there."
"Myrish men?"
"None, they say."
"No sign that a craftsman who knew the method entered the city?"
"I found none."
Rickard raised the pane to the window once more.
At least one part of the absurd tale that had wandered the North for months was true.
White Harbor truly was making glass.
"There is a Myrish pane in my solar, is there not?"
"There is."
"Bring it."
Shortly afterward, two sheets of glass lay side by side upon the desk.
This time, the difference was plain.
The Myrish glass was clearer.
It was nearly colorless, and its surface had been spread far more evenly. Objects warped less through it at the same thickness, and bubbles were difficult to find.
The White Harbor glass was thicker and heavier.
Its greenish hue remained.
Even to Rickard, no expert glassworker, it was plain which was superior.
Yet Rickard set down the Myrish pane and lifted the White Harbor one again.
He examined it for some time.
Then he asked:
"The price?"
The corner of Walys's mouth moved ever so slightly.
He wore the expression of a man who had expected that question.
Rickard was not a glassworker.
He was the lord who ruled the North.
What mattered to him was not which pane was more beautiful.
Where could it be used?
How much could be made?
How much must be paid?
And where would that money flow?
Winterfell already had its glass gardens.
They used heat rising from natural hot springs to warm the earth and the interior, while glass kept out the cold wind and snow. Even while snow gathered outside, greens and herbs, certain fruits and flowers grew within.
Rickard needed no explanation of their worth.
He had seen them since childhood.
The problem was the glass.
Even replacing a single broken pane required goods to come from far away. If they built larger glass gardens, the number of panes needed would swiftly rise, along with the coin spent upon them.
Rickard held the White Harbor glass to the light.
It was inferior to Myrish glass.
Clearly.
But the panes used in a glass garden did not need the crystal clarity of lenses.
Sunlight came through.
It kept out snow and wind.
So long as it did not break easily, that was enough.
"The current sale price remains high," Walys said.
"Production is small, and many pieces are of uneven quality."
"Not the sale price."
Rickard put down the glass.
"How much does it cost to make?"
Walys unfolded a document he had prepared.
Laborers' wages.
Fuel.
Raw materials.
Furnace maintenance.
Failed batches.
The cost of running the workshop.
It accounted even for their present low efficiency of production.
Rickard asked once more.
Walys repeated the same figures.
"...Only that much?"
"Yes."
The two panes of glass caught his eye again.
The Myrish pane was far more expensive.
It was not merely that Myrish merchants had cheated northerners. There was the accumulated skill of craftsmen needed to produce fine glass, and the cost of shipping it across the sea. Goods broken during the voyage were included in the price, and every merchant through whose hands it passed added his own share. Scarcity itself gave value to an article with few suppliers, and as winter approached and the North grew desperate, that price rose further.
The price of glass was not determined merely by the worth of sand and ash.
Yet even after he understood all of that, a question remained.
"There was a reason we paid such high prices."
Walys nodded.
"There was."
Rickard tapped the White Harbor glass with a finger.
"Whether we must keep paying them is another matter."
This time Walys smiled.
"I think so as well."
Rickard looked out the window.
A soldier crossing the snow-covered yard exhaled a long trail of white breath.
One pane of glass would not make the North's winter disappear.
Nor would a handful of White Harbor furnaces make grain from the Reach unnecessary.
Still, if glass became cheaper and its supply steadier, more glass gardens could be built.
Not only in Winterfell, but in other castles too.
Herbs could be grown.
Vegetables could be produced a little longer.
Saplings to plant in spring could be kept alive.
Such small differences accumulated with every passing year.
In the North, even that was of sufficient value.
Rickard laid the two panes upon the desk.
The Myrish glass was better.
But his attention was elsewhere now.
The report Manderly had sent along was not brief.
It listed present output and failure rates, an estimate of sellable panes, and projected production should more furnaces be added. It also said they had begun making bottles, cups, and mirrors as well as window glass.
Rickard read it to the end.
Then Walys presented a separately sealed letter.
"Wyman Manderly sent this himself."
Rickard broke the seal.
It was much shorter than the formal report.
But more interesting.
Wyman had displayed the glass made in the workshop to White Harbor merchants and riders. He had openly announced that the craftsmen stood under Manderly protection. The method was kept secret, and guards had been assigned to the workshop.
The same was true of the child who had begun it all.
Rickard's gaze stopped upon a name.
"Daemon."
"Yes."
"His name is Daemon?"
"It is."
"His family name?"
"They say it has not been disclosed in White Harbor."
Rickard read the letter more slowly.
He had crossed the sea with his mother.
They were no refugees who had fled empty-handed. From the start, they had acquired a fine home and kept no few servants. They had sufficient horses and furnishings, and continued to live in considerable comfort.
There was also an old man who had been with mother and son since before they came to White Harbor.
Raymund.
He was presently House Manderly's master of the hunt.
Wyman added a brief note.
He looked more like a man who had held a sword for many years than a hunter.
And he rarely left the child's side.
"The father?"
"They reveal only that he is dead."
"They do not say who he was?"
"No."
"Nor where he died?"
"No."
They used no family name.
They would not speak of the dead husband.
Yet they had money.
They had a loyal retainer who had followed them for years.
And the child's name was Daemon.
A Valyrian name.
Rickard did not imagine some great secret from that alone.
Several hundred years had passed since the Conquest. Some named their children after kings and princes, and such names were more common still in the Free Cities, where the traces of old Valyria remained strong.
Rather, set alongside the other circumstances, it formed one plausible picture.
"They do not appear to have been an ordinary family."
"That is my view as well."
"They have coin and retainers, yet conceal their past."
Rickard tapped the edge of the unfolded letter with a finger.
There was no way to know what had happened in Tyrosh.
It might have been political strife.
It might have been conflict between merchant families, or perhaps they had been driven out over property and rights.
There was no reason to believe that disputes between wealthy families in the Free Cities always ended with ledgers and words alone.
Rickard did not speculate beyond that.
What mattered now was not where they had come from, but where they would remain.
"It may not be a bad thing."
Walys raised his eyes.
"What may not?"
"If matters were tangled enough to drive them from their homeland, it will not be easy for them to return."
Walys thought for a moment, then understood.
"You mean they will have more reason to remain in the North."
"Yes."
Bringing people in and making them stay were different matters.
It was dangerous to spend much time and coin on someone who would depart as soon as better terms appeared.
But once they had a place to live.
Once they had people they knew.
Once they had a livelihood.
Once the things they would have to abandon upon leaving had grown numerous, the matter changed.
At some point, a new land ceased being a refuge and became home.
Wyman seemed to understand that.
He had not funded the child alone.
He was arranging a place for the mother to meet people and settle near House Manderly as well.
Rickard read that portion once more.
"Clever."
Wyman plainly liked the boy called Daemon.
But a man did not do this much merely because he liked someone.
He saw value.
And he had recognized that value was growing faster than expected.
"He is still only three?"
"Yes."
Rickard rose and walked to the window.
He had been three when Rickard first heard the tale as well.
Even now, it was not strange that he had refused to believe a child of that age had made glass.
That the object before him was real and that every tale surrounding it was true were separate matters.
Perhaps the child had merely offered one strange idea.
Perhaps he had touched upon an idea that an adult would have dismissed at once, because he did not know why it could not be done.
And then he had been fortunate.
The craftsmen had completed the rest.
It was a wholly possible account.
"One time may be chance."
Walys said, "There is the matter of the heating as well."
"That is why I am watching."
Rickard's reply was brief.
Once.
Twice.
And then.
The more often chance repeated itself, the harder it became to explain.
And the child was still only three.
After hesitating for a moment, Walys spoke.
"What if you summoned him here?"
Rickard turned to him.
"Why?"
"It would be easier to judge if you saw for yourself how much he truly knows."
He paused.
"You could ask him directly about the glass as well."
The corner of Rickard's mouth loosened slightly.
"It seems you are more curious about the glass than the child."
Walys considered that, then replied:
"Must the two be separated?"
A maester's answer.
Rickard laughed quietly.
Walys was young, and not the sort of man to leave what he did not know unknown. The moment Daemon entered Winterfell, whether he showed him books or praised him, he would find some way to start a conversation and dig out what lay inside the child's head.
There was nothing wrong with that in itself.
Indeed, a maester who was not curious about knowledge would be the problem.
But a lord could not look only at knowledge.
He had to look at people too.
What did the child know?
What did he want?
How did he work with craftsmen several times his age?
And could he reproduce what he had made once before?
Rickard unfolded Wyman's letter again.
The farther he read, the more it spoke of people rather than glass.
Daemon and the craftsmen of the workshop had been placed under Manderly protection.
That fact had not been concealed even before White Harbor's leading men.
The child's family was being drawn close to House Manderly.
The merman wanted to take the child into his embrace.
But Wyman had no intention of concealing that from Rickard.
How far he had extended his hand.
What he had supported.
What he wished to do going forward.
He had written it all.
At the end, he had even made clear that, should it be necessary, he would follow Winterfell's will.
Rickard read that part twice.
"He has great ambition."
Walys waited.
"But he has no intention of crossing the line."
That was important.
Wyman saw the possibility that Daemon's value would grow still greater.
Then someday other northern lords would ask:
Why does Manderly alone keep that child close?
Why do new skills and profits keep flowing first to White Harbor?
Before those questions could grow, Wyman had shown the pane to his liege lord.
Stark knows.
Stark permits it.
With those two facts attached, it would be difficult for anyone to claim that Manderly was secretly monopolizing a precious child.
And should Winterfell someday decide to keep Daemon closer, Wyman would not stand in the way.
In return, it would remain known that he was the first to recognize the child.
The man who provided the coin.
The man who assigned craftsmen.
And the man who did not hide him from his liege lord when his value grew.
That was no small merit.
Rickard had no intention of ignoring the service of such a vassal.
"Write a reply."
Walys took up his quill.
"Say the glass was received well, and that I have inspected its quality myself."
The pen scratched across parchment.
"Tell him to send more. I will use it myself in part of the glass gardens."
"How much do you want?"
"There is no need to begin on a grand scale. We will replace existing panes and see what we learn after several months."
How well the glass endured a true northern winter.
Whether the heat and damp from the hot springs caused trouble.
How often it broke.
Such things could be seen firsthand.
"Tell him to keep the craftsmen and the method protected as they are now."
"Yes."
"And say I have no objection to Manderly continuing to aid the child."
Walys wrote.
Rickard waited a moment.
Daemon.
Three years old.
The glass was real.
There was still much he did not know about the child himself.
Whether it was luck.
Talent.
Or something greater still.
There was time enough.
But no reason to delay seeing the boy in person.
"And."
Walys's pen stopped.
Rickard's gaze moved from the glass upon the desk to the letter.
"Tell him the wolf wishes to see the child as well."
This time, the nib scraped the parchment with greater force.
*
The ship traveling upstream on the White Knife was slow.
It was especially slow for Daemon.
Before half a day had passed after departure, he had begun peering into the river close to the rail, and not long afterward he caught hold of a boatman and asked why the ship sailed close to one bank rather than through the middle of the river.
The boatman explained that they were choosing a path where the current was weaker.
A little later, the ship returned to the middle of the river.
Daemon asked again.
The man briefly explained the riverbed's depth, its bends, and the currents that changed with the season.
Daemon stared at the water for a while, put the parts he could understand into his head, and simply left the rest alone.
Looking at an unfamiliar river a few times was not enough to understand every current of its flow.
More importantly, the man actually moving the vessel had traveled this river far longer than he had.
"Interesting."
That ended his questions.
For a little while, at least.
Raymund sat some distance from the child.
Whenever Daemon leaned too far over the rail, he did nothing but catch his collar and pull him back.
"I won't fall."
"That is what all the ones who fall say."
"I can swim."
"In a winter river?"
Daemon looked down at the water.
He changed his mind.
"...I would rather not."
After that, he stayed about a hand's breadth away from the rail.
Raymund was satisfied with that much.
The problem lay elsewhere.
Stark.
Winterfell.
Daemon.
His thoughts kept returning there.
When they first came to the North, Raymund had thought it the end of the world.
As far away as possible.
As quiet a place as possible.
The last land anyone would think to search, even if they sought the remaining blood of Maelys Blackfyre.
That was why they had chosen White Harbor.
It was one of the few northern cities where many outsiders passed through, and the Manderlys themselves were a house that had come from the south long ago. It suited a wealthy woman from Essos, her young son, and an old swordsman attached to their side far better than Winterfell did.
Raymund had also made a name for himself to use there.
House Manderly's master of the hunt.
He knew the woods.
He handled horses.
He followed tracks.
And when needed, he used a sword.
Had they put him in charge of ledgers, he would not have lasted long, but such work he had done all his life.
It was not a lofty position.
That was better.
Before then, he had been an unknown sword-for-hire attached to the side of a wealthy Essosi woman.
It was different after he became master of the hunt.
There was an explanation for why he wore a sword.
For why he came and went from the Manderly castle.
For why he traveled outside the city.
And should anyone pry too deeply, the name Manderly stood behind him.
The gamble had succeeded.
Daemon did not go hungry.
He slept somewhere warm, ate good food, and read books. He could receive treatment when sick, and if he wanted something, most of the time it could be obtained.
At least the child did not need to sleep each night fearing someone might open the door with a blade in hand.
Raymund worried in his stead.
That was his duty.
The trouble began after they were safe.
Daemon made far too good a use of that safety.
He tore up the floor of their home because the room was cold.
Then he had the same thing laid in other homes.
He even made coin from it.
This time, he had turned a workshop upside down claiming he would make glass—and then truly made glass.
The craftsmen knew his name.
The merchants knew.
Manderly riders knew.
And now.
Stark knew.
The path he had chosen to hide the child was leading him, in the end, before the Warden of the North.
Raymund looked at the river and thought.
It felt like a cruel joke.
Yet what pleased him even less was that he himself had changed.
At first, he had believed this whole life was temporary.
The White Harbor house.
Going out each morning to work at an appointed hour.
Returning in the evening.
Valena drinking tea with noblewomen, and Daemon studying at his own desk.
A life of keeping their heads down and waiting.
Something they could cast aside and leave when the time came.
That was what he had thought.
After several years, the word temporary began to sound strange.
There were things to do in the morning.
There was somewhere to return to in the evening.
More and more nights, he slept believing tomorrow would not be greatly different from today.
There were no war plans.
No mercenary companies on the march.
No discussion of which walls they would assault.
No need to calculate who would die in the next battle.
No nights spent debating who ought to sit the Iron Throne.
At first, it had been dull.
Then it became comfortable.
And from some point onward.
He did not want to lose it.
The day he first admitted that, he had felt foul all day.
Raymund was a Blackfyre knight.
He had lived taking the purpose of reclaiming the throne as a matter of course.
He had known Maelys since childhood.
He had taught him the sword.
He had done the same for his kin.
Where to place their feet.
Where to point the tip of a sword.
How to rise after falling.
Those children were meant to become the swords of the Black Dragon one day.
They had grown up that way.
And died that way.
To Raymund then, none of it had seemed strange.
At first, Daemon had been part of that same continuation.
The last remaining child.
The last blood.
He must be kept alive.
He must be protected.
One day, a sword must be placed in his hand.
That was the duty.
But at some point, the order had reversed.
Before, whenever he saw the child, he saw the name behind him first.
Blackfyre.
House.
Blood.
Cause.
What he must become.
Now.
Daemon came first.
The name followed after.
Raymund thought that change was not good.
As a knight.
As a man.
He was not certain.
One day, he had to tell him.
As far as Raymund knew, Daemon still knew nothing.
Why his hair was dyed black.
Why he used no family name.
Who his father had been.
What the name Blackfyre meant.
What Maelys had wanted, and where he had died.
And what Daemon himself had inherited.
The day would come when he had to tell him everything.
What expression would Daemon wear then?
Raymund had thought often of that question lately.
The Blackfyres Raymund had known had always looked toward the Iron Throne.
Some desired it sincerely.
Some had been raised to desire it.
Some had never been taught that refusing to desire it was a choice.
To the Black Dragon, the Iron Throne was both a goal and the reason for existence.
It had been the same for Raymund.
All his life.
But Daemon.
Raymund looked to the side.
Daemon was using one finger to push two drops of water gathered on the rail together.
Heating.
Glass.
Coin.
Books.
Workshops.
The strange word research funds.
There was no end to the things he wanted to do.
He was not a child without ambition.
Quite the opposite.
After several recent successes, his pride had grown too large to fit inside his small body.
But nowhere in that ambition was the Iron Throne.
Of course, perhaps that was because he did not know yet.
The instant he learned who he was, he might change.
When he heard of his father.
When he heard of his house.
When he learned of the right bound to his blood.
Something might begin to boil inside him.
But.
What if it did not?
If Daemon said he did not want it.
That he did not want to be king.
That he did not want war either.
That he merely wanted to live in a warm house, earn coin, read books, and turn workshops upside down.
What then was Raymund supposed to do?
As a knight, the answer ought already to have been settled.
Teach him his house's rights.
Tell him the cause of the Black Dragon.
Persuade him.
If necessary.
His thoughts stopped there.
If necessary, what would he do?
Drag the child to war?
All the way before a throne he did not want?
For whom?
The dead?
The house?
The Iron Throne?
Over the child alive before him?
His gut twisted.
Several years ago, he would not have asked such questions.
He no longer knew whether he had had no need to think of them, or had deliberately refused to.
Perhaps things had begun to go wrong little by little from his very first day in White Harbor.
From the day he watched Daemon eat his fill and sleep without a care in a warm bed.
From the day he learned far too late the obvious truth that a man could live well without a throne.
"Old man."
Raymund did not hear him.
"Old man."
His thoughts continued sinking inward.
Daemon clicked his tongue.
"Old man."
The third time.
Raymund turned his head.
"What?"
Daemon looked at his face for a moment, then said:
"You were digging yourself into a hole again, weren't you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"That look on your face."
"What is wrong with my face?"
"The face of someone worrying about every problem in the world all by himself."
Raymund frowned.
"Your manner of speech is frivolous."
"What is?"
"That, for a start."
Daemon blinked.
Raymund looked at the child and spoke low.
"That is no way to behave before your elder. Do not forget that you are three years old."
Daemon looked aggrieved.
"Does being three mean I cannot say something true?"
"Speaking the truth and speaking rudely are different things."
"Even though you are fine with me calling you old man?"
"I have already given up on that."
Daemon snickered.
"Then it is settled."
"It is not."
Raymund's hand moved.
Daemon immediately drew back.
They were on a narrow boat.
His cheek was caught.
"Ow! Wait!"
"I told you that you were frivolous."
"Ah, let go! That hurts!"
"When you speak that way to an older man, put your words through your mouth once before you say them."
"I know! I know!"
Raymund tugged once more before releasing him.
Daemon rubbed his reddened cheek, scowling.
His mouth opened as though to mutter something.
Raymund's gaze fell upon him.
Daemon considered for a moment, then shut his mouth.
"..."
"What? Continue what you were saying."
"It was nothing."
"Wise."
Daemon looked toward the river with an unhappy face.
The shoulder of a boatman rowing nearby trembled slightly.
Raymund pretended not to see.
The burdens that had weighed upon his mind moments ago had somehow drifted far away.
The throne.
The house.
Loyalty.
The confession he would have to make one day.
There were no answers.
Still, he did not have to decide them today.
Daemon was three.
A three-year-old who had questioned a boatman about river water moments ago and was now huffing because his cheek hurt.
For the time being, Raymund decided that was all he would think about.
*
Once they disembarked from the river and took to the road, the journey quickened somewhat.
Manderly had sent men ahead to prepare horses and a carriage at the landing place. Officially, Raymund traveled with them as Manderly's master of the hunt and Daemon's guardian.
Wyman had arranged it that way.
An unknown foreign swordsman following at a child's side made a wholly different impression from House Manderly's master of the hunt escorting a child he had long cared for all the way to Winterfell.
It was favor so neat it was almost uncomfortable.
Even so, Raymund did not refuse it.
The pretext he had made with his own hands years ago was opening the way for him once again.
They traveled north for several more days.
On the first day, Daemon spent nearly all day looking out of the carriage.
On the second, he began nodding off while reading with a book open before him.
On the third, his head was resting against the window frame.
Raymund did not wake him.
Before long, the carriage wheel struck a stone.
Rattle.
Daemon's head snapped upright.
His eyes opened at once.
Then, as though nothing had happened, he lowered his gaze to his book.
Raymund watched him for a moment.
"Were you asleep?"
"I was not."
"I saw you."
"I was thinking with my eyes closed."
Exactly as expected.
"You even snored."
Daemon's face stiffened.
"Liar."
"Yes."
Raymund did not bother continuing the argument.
After giving him a suspicious look for a moment, Daemon turned his head back toward the window.
The road was gradually rising.
Beneath a gray sky, the North's land stretched broad and wide.
The scattered trees slipped behind them.
Raymund suddenly remembered when he had first entered this land.
At the time, he believed he was heading to the end of the world.
As far as possible from people's memories.
Beyond the reach of the Red Dragon's hand.
Beyond the Black Dragon's grievance as well.
But now he was traveling toward the heart of that land.
Just then, one of the Manderly soldiers riding ahead lifted his head.
He seemed to have spotted something.
Daemon followed his gaze.
His whole body froze.
"...Old man."
"What?"
Daemon raised a hand.
The horizon.
Where gray sky met dark land.
A single, still tiny outline rose there.
It was so distant that it was difficult to tell whether it was a tower or a wall.
Daemon seemed to recognize it immediately.
The drowsiness that had lingered only minutes before vanished in an instant.
His body pitched forward.
"Old man."
His voice was louder this time.
"That is Winterfell, isn't it?"
Raymund raised his head as well.
It was faint.
Still far away.
But it was indeed Winterfell.
"Yes."
Daemon's face brightened.
"Wow."
There was no calculation in that one word.
Why Rickard Stark had summoned him.
What questions he would be asked.
How far his name had spread.
His face asked none of it.
He was simply delighted like a child seeing a vast northern castle for the first time.
Looking at the same sight, Raymund thought of entirely different things.
Stark.
Warden of the North.
More eyes.
More questions.
Silver hair that someday even dye could no longer conceal.
And a future for which even he had yet to find an answer.
Unaware of any of that, Daemon leaned farther forward.
Raymund caught the back of his clothes.
"You will fall."
"I won't."
"You said that by the river too."
"There is no water here."
"There is ground."
Daemon did not seem to be listening much.
His gaze remained fixed upon the distant castle.
"It really is huge."
Raymund did not release the child's clothing.
He looked at that castle and worried.
Daemon simply liked it.
For some reason, that difference stayed with him.
He could worry over the share the child did not.
That was how it had always been these past years.
He did not know how much longer he could do so.
But today.
For today, it was enough.
"Old man."
"What?"
"Let's go faster."
Raymund glanced toward the front of the carriage.
"I am not driving it."
Daemon thought for a moment.
Then he turned toward the driver.
"Mister."
Raymund immediately pulled him back again by the collar.
"Do not urge him on."
"Why?"
"The horses need rest too."
Daemon's lips poked out.
"We are almost there."
"The castle will not run away."
"But I want to see it quickly."
Raymund let out a faint snort.
"Then learn to be patient as well."
Daemon turned forward again with a dissatisfied expression.
The carriage continued northward at the same pace.
The faint outline hanging at the edge of the horizon gradually took the shape of towers and castle walls.
This was the North they had come to in order to hide.
And at its very heart.
The last child of the Black Dragon was traveling toward the wolf's castle.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register