LITMIR.BIZ

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Edd. “His Grace requests the presence of the lord commander. That’s how I’d say it.”

      “Leave it be, Edd.” Jon was in no mood for such squabbles.

      “Sir Richard and Ser Justin have returned,” said Devan. “Will you come, my lord?”

      The wrong-way rangers. Massey and Horpe had ridden south, not north. Whatever they had learned did not concern the Night’s Watch, but Jon was curious all the same. “If it would please His Grace.” He followed the young squire back across the yard. Ghost padded after them until Jon said, “No. Stay!” Instead the direwolf ran off.

      In the King’s Tower, Jon was stripped of his weapons and admitted to the royal presence. The solar was hot and crowded. Stannis and his captains were gathered over the map of the north. The wrong-way rangers were amongst them. Sigorn was there as well, the young Magnar of Thenn, clad in a leather hauberk sewn with bronze scales. Rattleshirt sat scratching at the manacle on his wrist with a cracked yellow fingernail. Brown stubble covered his sunken cheeks and receding chin, and strands of dirty hair hung across his eyes. “Here he comes,” he said when he saw Jon, “the brave boy who slew Mance Rayder when he was caged and bound.” The big square-cut gem that adorned his iron cuff glimmered redly. “Do you like my ruby, Snow? A token o’ love from Lady Red.”

      Jon ignored him and took a knee. “Your Grace,” announced the squire Devan, “I’ve brought Lord Snow.”

      “I can see that. Lord Commander. You know my knights and captains, I believe.”

      “I have that honor.” He had made it a point to learn all he could of the men around the king. Queen’s men, all. It struck Jon as odd that there were no king’s men about the king, but that seemed to be the way of it. The king’s men had incurred Stannis’s ire on Dragonstone if the talk Jon heard was true.

      “There is wine. Or water boiled with lemons.”

      “Thank you, but no.”

      “As you wish. I have a gift for you, Lord Snow.” The king waved a hand at Rattleshirt. “Him.”

      Lady Melisandre smiled. “You did say you wanted men, Lord Snow. I believe our Lord of Bones still qualifies.”

      Jon was aghast. “Your Grace, this man cannot be trusted. If I keep him here, someone will slit his throat for him. If I send him ranging, he’ll just go back over to the wildlings.”

      “Not me. I’m done with those bloody fools.” Rattleshirt tapped the ruby on his wrist. “Ask your red witch, bastard.”

      Melisandre spoke softly in a strange tongue. The ruby at her throat throbbed slowly, and Jon saw that the smaller stone on Rattleshirt’s wrist was brightening and darkening as well. “So long as he wears the gem he is bound to me, blood and soul,” the red priestess said. “This man will serve you faithfully. The flames do not lie, Lord Snow.”

      Perhaps not, Jon thought, but you do.

      “I’ll range for you, bastard,” Rattleshirt declared. “I’ll give you sage counsel or sing you pretty songs, as you prefer. I’ll even fight for you. Just don’t ask me to wear your cloak.”

      You are not worthy of one, Jon thought, but he held his tongue. No good would come of squabbling before the king.

      King Stannis said, “Lord Snow, tell me of Mors Umber.”

      The Night’s Watch takes no part, Jon thought, but another voice within him said, Words are not swords. “The elder of the Greatjon’s uncles. Crowfood, they call him. A crow once took him for dead and pecked out his eye. He caught the bird in his fist and bit its head off. When Mors was young he was a fearsome fighter. His sons died on the Trident, his wife in childbed. His only daughter was carried off by wildlings thirty years ago.”

      “That’s why he wants the head,” said Harwood Fell.

      “Can this man Mors be trusted?” asked Stannis.

      Has Mors Umber bent the knee? “Your Grace should have him swear an oath before his heart tree.”

      Godry the Giantslayer guffawed. “I had forgotten that you northmen worship trees.”

      “What sort of god lets himself be pissed upon by dogs?” asked Farring’s crony Clayton Suggs.

      Jon chose to ignore them. “Your Grace, might I know if the Umbers have declared for you?”

      “Half of them, and only if I meet this Crowfood’s price,” said Stannis, in an irritated tone. “He wants Mance Rayder’s skull for a drinking cup, and he wants a pardon for his brother, who has ridden south to join Bolton. Whoresbane, he’s called.”

      Ser Godry was amused by that as well. “What names these northmen have! Did this one bite the head off some whore?”

      Jon regarded him coolly. “You might say so. A whore who tried to rob him, fifty years ago in Oldtown.” Odd as it might seem, old Hoarfrost Umber had once believed his youngest son had the makings of a maester. Mors loved to boast about the crow who took his eye, but Hother’s tale was only told in whispers … most like because the whore he’d disemboweled had been a man. “Have other lords declared for Bolton too?”

      The red priestess slid closer to the king. “I saw a town with wooden walls and wooden streets, filled with men. Banners flew above its walls: a moose, a battle-axe, three pine trees, longaxes crossed beneath a crown, a horse’s head with fiery eyes.”

      “Hornwood, Cerwyn, Tallhart, Ryswell, and Dustin,” supplied Ser Clayton Suggs. “Traitors, all. Lapdogs of the Lannisters.”

      “The Ryswells and Dustins are tied to House Bolton by marriage,” Jon informed him. “These others have lost their lords in the fighting. I do not know who leads them now. Crowfood is no lapdog, though. Your Grace would do well to accept his terms.”

      Stannis ground his teeth. “He informs me that Umber will not fight Umber, for any cause.”

      Jon was not surprised. “If it comes to swords, see where Hother’s banner flies and put Mors on the other end of the line.”

      The Giantslayer disagreed. “You would make His Grace look weak. I say, show our strength. Burn Last Hearth to the ground and ride to war with Crowfood’s head mounted on a spear, as a lesson to the next lord who presumes to offer half his homage.”

      “A fine plan if what you want is every hand in the north raised against you. Half is more than none. The Umbers have no love for the Boltons. If Whoresbane has joined the Bastard, it can only be because the Lannisters hold the Greatjon captive.”

      “That is his pretext, not his reason,” declared Ser Godry. “If the nephew dies in chains, these uncles can claim his lands and lordship for themselves.”

      “The Greatjon has sons and daughters both. In the north the children of a man’s body still come before his uncles, ser.”

      “Unless they die. Dead children come last everywhere.”

      “Suggest that in the hearing of Mors Umber, Ser Godry, and you will learn more of death than you might wish.”

      “I have slain a giant, boy. Why should I fear some flea-ridden northman who paints one on his shield?”

      “The giant was running away. Mors won’t be.”

      The big knight flushed. “You have a bold tongue in the king’s solar, boy. In the yard you sang a different song.”

      “Oh, leave off, Godry,” said Ser Justin Massey, a loose-limbed, fleshy knight with a ready smile and a mop of flaxen hair. Massey had been one of the wrong-way rangers. “We all know what a big giant sword you have, I’m sure. No need for you to wave it in our faces yet again.”

      “The only thing waving here is your tongue, Massey.”

      “Be quiet,” Stannis snapped. “Lord Snow, attend me. I have lingered here in the hopes that the wildlings would be fool enough to mount another attack upon the Wall. As they will not oblige me, it is time I dealt with my

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