“Very good.” The queen glanced about the yard. “First, though, we wish to consult with the Lady Melisandre.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Her apartments are in the King’s Tower as well. This way, if you will?” Queen Selyse nodded, took her daughter by the hand, and permitted him to lead them from the stables. Ser Axell, the Braavosi banker, and the rest of her party followed, like so many ducklings done up in wool and fur.
“Your Grace,” said Jon Snow, “my builders have done all they can to make the Nightfort ready to receive you … yet much of it remains in ruins. It is a large castle, the largest on the Wall, and we have only been able to restore a part of it. You might be more comfortable back at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.”
Queen Selyse sniffed. “We are done with Eastwatch. We did not like it there. A queen should be mistress beneath her own roof. We found your Cotter Pyke to be an uncouth and unpleasant man, quarrelsome and niggardly.”
You should hear what Cotter says of you. “I am sorry for that, but I fear Your Grace will find conditions at the Nightfort even less to your liking. We speak of a fortress, not a palace. A grim place, and cold. Whereas Eastwatch—”
“Eastwatch is not safe.” The queen put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “This is the king’s true heir. Shireen will one day sit the Iron Throne and rule the Seven Kingdoms. She must be kept from harm, and Eastwatch is where the attack will come. This Nightfort is the place my husband has chosen for our seat, and there we shall abide. We—oh!”
An enormous shadow emerged from behind the shell of the Lord Commander’s Tower. Princess Shireen gave a shriek, and three of the queen’s knights gasped in harmony. Another swore. “Seven save us,” he said, quite forgetting his new red god in his shock.
“Don’t be afraid,” Jon told them. “There’s no harm in him, Your Grace. This is Wun Wun.”
“Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun.” The giant’s voice rumbled like a boulder crashing down a mountainside. He sank to his knees before them. Even kneeling, he loomed over them. “Kneel queen. Little queen.” Words that Leathers had taught him, no doubt.
Princess Shireen’s eyes went wide as dinner plates. “He’s a giant! A real true giant, like from the stories. But why does he talk so funny?”
“He only knows a few words of the Common Tongue as yet,” said Jon. “In their own land, giants speak the Old Tongue.”
“Can I touch him?”
“Best not,” her mother warned. “Look at him. A filthy creature.” The queen turned her frown on Jon. “Lord Snow, what is this bestial creature doing on our side of the Wall?”
“Wun Wun is a guest of the Night’s Watch, as you are.”
The queen did not like that answer. Nor did her knights. Ser Axell grimaced in disgust, Ser Brus gave a nervous titter, Ser Narbert said, “I had been told all the giants were dead.”
“Almost all.” Ygritte wept for them.
“In the dark the dead are dancing.” Patchface shuffled his feet in a grotesque dance step. “I know, I know, oh oh oh.” At Eastwatch someone had sewn him a motley cloak of beaver pelts, sheepskins, and rabbit fur. His hat sported antlers hung with bells and long brown flaps of squirrel fur that hung down over his ears. Every step he took set him to ringing.
Wun Wun gaped at him with fascination, but when the giant reached for him the fool hopped back away, jingling. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” That brought Wun Wun lurching to his feet. The queen grabbed hold of Princess Shireen and pulled her back, her knights reached for their swords, and Patchface reeled away in alarm, lost his footing, and plopped down on his arse in a snowdrift.
Wun Wun began to laugh. A giant’s laughter could put to shame a dragon’s roar. Patchface covered his ears, Princess Shireen pressed her face into her mother’s furs, and the boldest of the queen’s knights moved forward, steel in hand. Jon raised an arm to block his path. “You do not want to anger him. Sheathe your steel, ser. Leathers, take Wun Wun back to Hardin’s.”
“Eat now, Wun Wun?” asked the giant.
“Eat now,” Jon agreed. To Leathers he said, “I’ll send out a bushel of vegetables for him and meat for you. Start a fire.”
Leathers grinned. “I will, m’lord, but Hardin’s is bone cold. Perhaps m’lord could send out some wine to warm us?”
“For you. Not him.” Wun Wun had never tasted wine until he came to Castle Black, but once he had, he had taken a gigantic liking to it. Too much a liking. Jon had enough to contend with just now without adding a drunken giant to the mix. He turned back to the queen’s knights. “My lord father used to say a man should never draw his sword unless he means to use it.”
“Using it was my intent.” The knight was clean-shaved and windburnt; beneath a cloak of white fur he wore a cloth-of-silver surcoat emblazoned with a blue five-pointed star. “I had been given to understand that the Night’s Watch defended the realm against such monsters. No one mentioned keeping them as pets.”
Another bloody southron fool. “You are … ?”
“Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain, if it please my lord.”
“I do not know how you observe guest right on your mountain, ser. In the north we hold it sacred. Wun Wun is a guest here.”
Ser Patrek smiled. “Tell me, Lord Commander, should the Others turn up, do you plan to offer hospitality to them as well?” The knight turned to his queen. “Your Grace, that is the King’s Tower there, if I am not mistaken. If I may have the honor?”
“As you wish.” The queen took his arm and swept past the men of the Night’s Watch with never a second glance.
Those flames on her crown are the warmest thing about her. “Lord Tycho,” Jon called. “A moment, please.”
The Braavosi halted. “No lord I. Only a simple servant of the Iron Bank of Braavos.”
“Cotter Pyke informs me that you came to Eastwatch with three ships. A galleas, a galley, and a cog.”
“Just so, my lord. The crossing can be perilous in this season. One ship alone may founder, where three together may aid one another. The Iron Bank is always prudent in such matters.”
“Perhaps before you leave we might have a quiet word?”
“I am at your service, Lord Commander. And in Braavos we say there is no time like the present. Will that suit?”
“As good as any. Shall we repair to my solar, or would you like to see the top of the Wall?”
The banker glanced up, to where the ice loomed vast and pale against the sky. “I fear it will be bitter cold up top.”
“That, and windy. You learn to walk well away from the edge. Men have been blown off. Still. The Wall is like nothing else on earth. You may never have another chance to see it.”
“No doubt I shall rue my caution upon my deathbed, but after a long day in the saddle, a warm room sounds preferable to me.”
“My solar, then. Satin, some mulled wine, if you would.”
Jon’s rooms behind the armory were quiet enough, if not especially warm. His fire had gone out some time ago; Satin was not as diligent in feeding it as Dolorous Edd had been. Mormont’s raven greeted them with a shriek of “Corn!” Jon hung up his cloak. “You come seeking Stannis, is that correct?”
“It is, my lord. Queen Selyse has suggested that we might send word to Deepwood Motte by raven, to inform His Grace that I await his pleasure at the Nightfort. The matter that I mean to put to him is too delicate to entrust to letters.”
“A debt.” What else could it be? “His own debt? Or his brother’s?”
The