Lord Rodrik’s high seat was vacant. Two scythes of beaten silver crossed above it, so huge that even a giant would have difficulty wielding them, but beneath were only empty cushions. Asha was not surprised. The feast was long concluded. Only bones and greasy platters remained upon the trestle tables. The rest were drinking, and her uncle Rodrik had never been partial to the company of quarrelsome drunks.
She turned to Three-Tooth, an old woman of fearful age who had been her uncle’s steward since she was known as Twelve-Tooth. “My uncle is with his books?”
“Aye, where else?” The woman was so old that a septon had once said she must have nursed the Crone. That was when the Faith was still tolerated on the isles. Lord Rodrik had kept septons at Ten Towers, not for his soul’s sake but for his books. “With the books, and Botley. He was with him too.”
Botley’s standard hung in the hall, a shoal of silver fish upon a pale green field, though Asha had not seen his Swiftfin amongst the other longships. “I had heard my nuncle Crow’s Eye had old Sawane Botley drowned.”
“Lord Tristifer Botley, this one is.”
Tris. She wondered what had happened to Sawane’s elder son, Harren. I will find out soon enough, no doubt. This should be awkward. She had not seen Tris Botley since … no, she ought not dwell on it. “And my lady mother?”
“Abed,” said Three-Tooth, “in the Widow’s Tower.”
Aye, where else? The widow the tower was named after was her aunt. Lady Gwynesse had come home to mourn after her husband had died off Fair Isle during Balon Greyjoy’s first rebellion. “I will only stay until my grief has passed,” she had told her brother, famously, “though by rights Ten Towers should be mine, for I am seven years your elder.” Long years had passed since then, but still the widow lingered, grieving, and muttering from time to time that the castle should be hers. And now Lord Rodrik has a second half-mad widowed sister beneath his roof, Asha reflected. Small wonder if he seeks solace in his books.
Even now, it was hard to credit that frail, sickly Lady Alannys had outlived her husband Lord Balon, who had seemed so hard and strong. When Asha had sailed away to war, she had done so with a heavy heart, fearing that her mother might well die before she could return. Not once had she thought that her father might perish instead. The Drowned God plays savage japes upon us all, but men are crueler still. A sudden storm and a broken rope had sent Balon Greyjoy to his death. Or so they claim.
Asha had last seen her mother when she stopped at Ten Towers to take on fresh water, on her way north to strike at Deepwood Motte. Alannys Harlaw never had the sort of beauty the singers cherished, but her daughter had loved her fierce strong face and the laughter in her eyes. On that last visit, though, she had found Lady Alannys in a window seat huddled beneath a pile of furs, staring out across the sea. Is this my mother, or her ghost? she remembered thinking as she’d kissed her cheek.
Her mother’s skin had been parchment thin, her long hair white. Some pride remained in the way she held her head, but her eyes were dim and cloudy, and her mouth had trembled when she asked after Theon. “Did you bring my baby boy?” she had asked. Theon had been ten years old when he was carried off to Winterfell a hostage, and so far as Lady Alannys was concerned he would always be ten years old, it seemed. “Theon could not come,” Asha had to tell her. “Father sent him reaving along the Stony Shore.” Lady Alannys had naught to say to that. She only nodded slowly, yet it was plain to see how deep her daughter’s words had cut her.
And now I must tell her that Theon is dead, and drive yet another dagger through her heart. There were two knives buried there already. On the blades were writ the words Rodrik and Maron, and many a time they twisted cruelly in the night. I will see her on the morrow, Asha vowed to herself. Her journey had been long and wearisome, she could not face her mother now.
“I must speak with Lord Rodrik,” she told Three-Tooth. “See to my crew, once they’re done unloading Black Wind. They’ll bring captives. I want them to have warm beds and a hot meal.”
“There’s cold beef in the kitchens. And mustard in a big stone jar, from Oldtown.” The thought of that mustard made the old woman smile. A single long brown tooth poked from her gums.
“That will not serve. We had a rough crossing. I want something hot in their bellies.” Asha hooked a thumb through the studded belt about her hips. “Lady Glover and the children should not want for wood nor warmth. Put them in some tower, not the dungeons. The babe is sick.”
“Babes are often sick. Most die, and folks are sorry. I shall ask my lord where to put these wolf folk.”
She caught the woman’s nose between thumb and forefinger and pinched. “You will do as I say. And if this babe dies, no one will be sorrier than you.” Three-Tooth squealed and promised to obey, till Asha let her loose and went to find her uncle.
It was good to walk these halls again. Ten Towers had always felt like home to Asha, more so than Pyke. Not one castle, ten castles squashed together, she had thought, the first time she had seen it. She remembered breathless races up and down the steps and along wallwalks and covered bridges, fishing off the Long Stone Quay, days and nights lost amongst her uncle’s wealth of books. His grandfather’s grandfather had raised the castle, the newest on the isles. Lord Theomore Harlaw had lost three sons in the cradle and laid the blame upon the flooded cellars, damp stones, and festering nitre of ancient Harlaw Hall. Ten Towers was airier, more comfortable, better sited … but Lord Theomore was a changeable man, as any of his wives might have testified. He’d had six of those, as dissimilar as his ten towers.
The Book Tower was the fattest of the ten, octagonal in shape and made with great blocks of hewn stone. The stair was built within the thickness of the walls. Asha climbed quickly, to the fifth story and the room where her uncle read. Not that there are any rooms where he does not read. Lord Rodrik was seldom seen without a book in hand, be it in the privy, on the deck of his Sea Song, or whilst holding audience. Asha had oft seen him reading on his high seat beneath the silver scythes. He would listen to each case as it was laid before him, pronounce his judgment … and read a bit whilst his captain-of-guards went to bring in the next supplicant.
She found him hunched over a table by a window, surrounded by parchment scrolls that might have come from Valyria before its Doom, and heavy leather-bound books with bronze-and-iron hasps. Beeswax candles as thick and tall as a man’s arm burned on either side of where he sat, on ornate iron holders. Lord Rodrik Harlaw was neither fat nor slim; neither tall nor short; neither ugly nor handsome. His hair was brown, as were his eyes, though the short, neat beard he favored had gone grey. All in all, he was an ordinary man, distinguished only by his love of written words, which so many ironborn found unmanly and perverse.
“Nuncle.” She closed the door behind her. “What reading was so urgent that you leave your guests without a host?”
“Archmaester Marwyn’s Book of Lost Books.” He lifted his gaze from the page to study her. “Hotho brought me a copy from Oldtown. He has a daughter he would have me wed.” Lord Rodrik tapped the book with a long nail. “See here? Marwyn claims to have found three pages of Signs and Portents, visions written down by the maiden daughter of Aenar Targaryen before the Doom came to Valyria. Does Lanny know that you are here?”
“Not as yet.” Lanny was his pet name for her mother; only the Reader called her that. “Let her rest.” Asha moved a stack of books off a stool and seated herself. “Three-Tooth seems to have lost two more of her teeth. Do you call her One-Tooth now?”
“I seldom call her at all. The woman frightens me. What hour is it?”