Chapter 10: The Joys of Womanhood Are Many and Troublesome (II)
"-. 273 AC .-"
To Lyarra Stark's chagrin, Brandon made no more sense than her husband did. She tried to feel mollified by their admission that they themselves didn't understand things any better than she did now. It even worked, somewhat. But only when she didn't think about the horrifying sight of that long, purple scar bisecting her firstborn son straight through. It didn't even look like a scar, more like an unnaturally thick cut that had fused but not scabbed over. And didn't look like it would. That he was cold to the touch on every part of his body below it didn't make her feel any better, never mind Brandon's reassurances that it didn't hurt or impede him any. Lyarra would not apologise for giving herself a day to cling to and fuss over and dote on her firstborn.
Then she threw herself back into keeping the household in order while assembling their baggage train. They had a lot to put in place if they wanted to put on the proper appearance to the Cerwyns. Unlike the South where you were judged based on the lavishness of your court and how generous your table, in the North guests were expected to bring as much as they were likely to consume. That meant food and drink, if not gifts. It was a mixed blessing that things moved at such a frenetic pace. It let her keep her mind of things.
Not all things though. In fact, there were several developments that would stay with her. And possibly go down in history.
The first was right on the day after her menfolk's return from what was now being called Crow's End among the guards. Rickard sent for young Walder, then took him, her, Brandon and Martyn Cassel to the lichyard. There, he led the way amidst the many headstones spotted with lichen to the small side entrance into the disused First Keep. The one that opened into the ancient servant quarters where Old Nan had taken residence 'because who better to tend to the departed servants of the Winter Kings?' Lyarra didn't think the old woman had ever actually explained what she meant by that, but-
"Alysanne Stark." Old Nan yelped and pricked herself on the spindle. "Daughter of Berron Stark and Lorra Royce. Would you have me go to my grave without ever knowing my grand-aunt?"
The only one that sputtered worse than Lyarra Stark at that revelation was the old woman herself. How did Rickard know that? Wait, she had a secret grand-aunt living under her roof this whole time!?
"What, really?" Brandon said, amazed. Then something closer to astonishment stole over his face. "Wait, you're Dunk's sweetheart!?"
Now it was Rickard's turn to be surprised. Not that the rest of them were much better.
A deluge of confessions, protestations and frankly preposterous histrionics ensued. One that Rickard stomped on by way of a flabbergasted Walder – Duncan the Tall's grandson! – assigned as Cassel's squire while the Warden of the North publicly marched Old Nan into the Great Keep on pain of never being allowed to tell stories again. Lyarra promptly followed that by making her Lyanna's governess. Many half-hearted griping followed about toothless, shrunken and wrinkled unsuitability. Her grand-aunt doth protest too much, Lyarra fumed. Wasn't she the only one of the Stark widows in her generation that didn't cause a succession crisis? And what about old uncle Edwyle? Or Willam and Donnor before him? Did they know? Did they allow it? What even was all this? Where was the elder wisdom? Where was the common sense? Gods!
Her daughter decried her terrible fate up until the Maester showed himself to be just as scandalised. "I advise against this, My Lord! My Lady! You can't mean for the young lady to be led astray by old wives' tales!" Then Lyanna was suddenly overjoyed at the development, gloating up, down and sideways that she'd now have 'old story lady' all to herself. Although she might have done it just to make Benjen wail in dismay. Lyarra could never be sure with her daughter.
The second big thing that happened was Lyanna's exceedingly dolorous tantrum mid-way through the third sennight. Or, rather, what happened in the lead-in to it. And around it. And Gods knew how else.
Rickard rose from bed at the hour of the finch and went to the Godswood. He didn't say why, but didn't say anything against her accompanying him either. So she went with him. They found Brandon standing statue-still on the biggest root that sunk into the black pool, staring down into the depths. What followed confirmed Lyarra's suspicions that her husband and son dreamed far different dreams than hers or anyone else's.
"You've been dreamwalking all this time," Rickard said, stopping just outside reaching distance of their son. "But only now you look to your own?"
"I like to fly," Brandon said, not looking away from the reflection-less water. "And if I drift too low, I get distracted."
"By?"
"People are dying everywhere. All the time." Lyara shivered, and it wasn't just from the cold. "Their dreams aren't too bright, but they're loud. And they leave things behind. Especially if there isn't a weirwood conveniently nearby to ferry them off. Maybe that's why magic's built on blood and murder. A fresh kill means everything on the other side is immediately available for… whatever."
"Hmm," Rickard hummed, as if he weren't at all rattled by hearing such things from his son of ten name days. Sometimes, Lyarra seriously wondered how her husband could even move with so much ice in his veins. "Where have you flown?"
"The Wall. The Barrowlands. The Neck. Moat Cailin. Bunch of other places."
"The south?"
"Not yet."
"Good. Don't." Lyarra blinked in surprise. Brandon did as well, finally looking up from the black depths.
"I am not pleased you've been flying anywhere at all, mind," Rickard said flatly. "I hope I won't have to remind you daily of what it's already done to you." Brandon had the grace to look abashed. "I'll not ignore that this is my oversight, and that you've lived up to your word on everything up to now."
"Thanks, dad."
"But you should have kept me informed, if not consulted with me on your nightly activities. As you did not, I find that my trust in your judgment has sharply decreased."
"Oh."
"Indeed," said the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. "I realise I'm not any sort of seer, but absence of shared experience is not absence of understanding. Or wisdom. Or authority. That snobbery belongs to Maesters, fools and madmen, not you."
"..."
"Am I understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Outside the family, I'll be deciding from now on where you fly and who you dream with until further notice. And in case your dreaming self can't help taking all leave of his senses, let me make one thing clear right here: don't even look at King's Landing. I'll know just from the look on your face if you get too close to that pit."
Brandon made a face as if he could guess the reason behind that last order. Lyarra was absolutely certain he didn't though. Not by a long shot. Doubted he did. Hoped he didn't. The sort of filth that made up that cesspool of a city, maybe he could conceive of it. But the sheer malice that southrons showed one another stretched the edges of Lyarra's own disbelief. And the depravities inflicted by septons on girls and boys no older than Brandon and the rest of her children, Gods, those were the worst. Lyarra couldn't stomach thinking about them for more than a second, and she'd only learned of them second-hand.
Her husband's voice pulled her out of her dark thoughts. "I hope we won't need to have this talk again. Now is there anything else I should perhaps be informed of, my son?"
"… I'm not sure?" Brandon said uncertainly. Lyarra didn't know if she should be proud, suspicious or alarmed at her son's easy compliance with her husband's commands. "I guess sometimes it feels like I'm still dreaming even when I'm awake, except at the same time not? Almost like I'm skinchanging, but without actually doing it? Even when I am doing it too. Like I'm doing it twice, but not really?"
Lyarra stared blankly at her son. For that matter, so did her husband.
Brandon scowled at them both. "Well, you asked! I don't know how else to explain it."
"…Alright then, we'll have to wait and see," Rickard said eventually, then held an arm out. "Come now. The night may be for dreaming, but we still have to find our worth in the waking world."
Brandon made far too strange a face at Rickard's choice of words, but hopped off the roots and let himself be walked out of the Godswood and back to the Great Keep.
It wasn't until the mid-day meal that Lyarra realised she'd forgotten to ask just why Brandon had gone to the Godswood at all. She also got an all-new reason to be glad their family supped lunch in private.
"So Lyanna," her eldest son said idly as he spread butter over a slice of bread. Slowly. With shaky, exhausted hands. "When are you going to introduce us to your friend?"
"Eh?"
"Don't get me wrong, I'd've gone with a rabbit myself, but as far as ponies go it's pretty much perfect. Young, strong, hearty and with the cleanest, whitest coat of hair I've ever seen dreamed in my life."
Lyanna Stark froze.
"I mean, I would feel better if you'd be at least a bit hesitant to ride it all the way down a bottomless watery abyss, but you're probably old hand at that at this point, right?"
The girl gaped at her older brother, shocked.
"You might want to look up every once in a while, though. Might help to know when you're being watched and-"
"Shut up!" Lyanna threw her bowl of honeyed porridge at Brandon's face. "Shut up, shut up, shut UP!" She wailed when Brandon ducked under the table just in time. "That's none of your business!"
"Lya, what-?"
"You've already got everything! Mom, Dad, everyone likes you and you get to do anything you want! What about us, huh? What if I want to do what I want, huh? I've got stuff I like too, and you can't have it! It's my wonderland." Lyanna Stark then fled the room in tears.
Lyarra Stark stared after her daughter in open-mouthed shock. And she was far from the only one.
"Er…" Brandon slowly peered over the edge of the table. "That didn't go any way I expected."
"You don't say," Rickard said, just as bewildered. Not that anyone could see it but her.
"I request permission to finally delve the Greendream, Father."
"Granted. Clearly something must be done if you are not, in fact, the first in your generation to do so."
Lyarra Stark seriously considered the fringe benefits of a cast-iron skillet.
"So that's why she didn't see the lightning!" Benjen cried in a sudden revelation that escaped Lyarra entirely. It fairly staggered everyone else too. "But how'd she miss the eyes?"
Brandon looked oddly at his brother. "How indeed." He gave Benjen a very intense stare then. "Do I want to know what your dreams are like?"
"How should I know?" Benjen said with childish confusion. "I never know what you're thinking, and I follow you around all the time!"
No he didn't.
"No you don't," Brandon said slowly. "Unless we're talking about different things here."
"Or the same one," Rickard said lowly, rising to go sit next to Benjen instead. "Son, why don't you tell us about your dreams for a change, hmm?"
"You want to know about my dreams?" Benjen asked, amazed.
"Ned, you too."
"Alright? I don't think I'll have much to tell though. I don't dream much at all."
"Right," Lyarra said briskly, standing up and smoothing down her dress. "While you three do that, I'll go attend to my daughter." And maybe one of her family will finally make some sense.
She didn't. All she got from Lyanna's blubbering diatribe was that her daughter was as quick to miss her brother as she was to resent him for suddenly commanding all of their father's attention. Never mind that she never used to seek Rickard out all that much in the first place. Lyarra swallowed her pride and went to Brandon for answers again. And when he didn't make much more sense than Lyanna did – he just ended up rambling about some girl called Alice and a land of wonders or other – she went to her husband. She really should have done that from the start.
"She doesn't have the greensight, I don't think," Rickard told her that same day in the Godswood as he shook the snow off his naked body. Brandon's madness was catching after all, Lyarra thought crossly. "We do have both greenseers and wargs in our ancestry. But that doesn't mean normal dreams can't drift down the right paths. Especially with a Heart Tree so close that's as ancient as ours. Doubly so now that I've cleared it of miscreants, so to speak. There's weight to old things. Maybe it has its own pull, at least on those with open minds. And the young have the most open mind of all. Although I think Lyanna might be a tad too single-minded, if she's really wandering into the Greendream without realising it. The opposite of little Ben. He doesn't seem to be self-aware while in his dreams, but he remembers them easily. Now, at least."
The Greendream. The Flint had talked to her of it once. The world where faithful first men went to rest with the Gods after death. And where the unfaithful met their final end. Those executed in sight of a Heart Tree at least. She'd never given much thought to how that world twined with this one. And for good reason, because really! Dreams! She'd reached the point where she fretted for hours at a time over dreams. This was it. This was her life now.
Lady Lyarra of House Stark decided then and there that she hated mysteries. Doubly so after her husband himself admitted even he was mainly assuming and guessing at that point. For a dark moment, she wanted to be angry at him. Resent him. Blame him for all the confusion in her life. But being petty was a quick way to end up dead in the mountains, and she wasn't about to forget that lesson just because she lived in a castle now. She just wished she could throw aside her envy and jealousy the same way.
Then came and went the time when she should have gotten her moonblood and she had something completely different to fret over.
"How late are you, My Lady?" Maester Walys asked her when she went to him in his tower.
"A sennight now."
"Any pains?"
"No more than usual."
"Have you bled otherwise?"
"No."
"I see. So far I see nothing out of the ordinary, at least not for you, my Lady. Nonetheless, I would like to keep a close hand on this. Please see me as soon as you return from your journey."
"You won't tell anyone else, I hope? Either it's nothing, or it's something and I want it to be surprise."
"My Lady, as always when it doesn't run counter to my patient's health, my lips are sealed."
She did her best not to hope. Or worry. Or jump to conclusions and otherwise behave such that it would give her away. It was easier than it had been the past few years, which was a mixed blessing. Ever since she had Benjen, her times had been fickle. So had her moonpains. And not always in the same way either.
She soon had her mind taken off that as well. The day prior to their departure, Brandon asked to see them in their chambers early in the morning. Fortunately, he wasn't so early that he interrupted their personal time. They got dressed quickly and sat next to each other on the edge of their bed to receive him.
"I bring gifts!" Her son grandly proclaimed. He accepted a satchel from his guard – a large one – and waited for Martyn Cassel to bring Rickard's chair over before he dismissed him and climbed on it. Then he pulled out and gave them each a box. They were solid, pretty things made of varnished redwood, hinged at the back and closed at the front with one of those new ratcheting clasps her son loved so much. "Behold, the grooming kit!"
They each opened their box to reveal a truncated interior padded with cotton wool lined with black velvet. They were entirely filled with items, many of which she was unfamiliar with. Seeing one of those horsehair toothbrushes her son prayed to so often wasn't all that startling, nor were the scissors, but the jar next to them was a surprise, filled with what he called toothpaste.
"Don't tell anyone but it's just sea salt mixed with water and oil from lemon crust," Brandon said. "Mint works too though, if we ever want to trade it."
There was a lot more in the case. Scented soap that smelled like blue roses, a hair comb, a hair brush, twenty leather hair ties. From there things stopped being so familiar. Even the ones that seemed obvious in hindsight. The nail clipper proved its weight in gold immediately, once Rickard proved his usual prompt self in testing it. Clip, clip, clip went the wolf's rough claws. The safety pins also seemed terribly useful. Lyarra Stark seriously wondered why no one had come up with them before. There was even what looked like a small collapsible rake but which her son cheekily introduced as an extendable backscratcher.
"Now everyone will have to scratch mine back!"
Then there were the things her son thought were only suited for a woman, as opposed to those meant for a man. The headband was nothing she'd never seen before, but she couldn't say the same about the pincers or the tiny pair of scissors, let alone the nail file. The explanation for the first two made her blush. The last left her scandalised. A sharpening stone for her nails! Madness! The snap hair clips, though, she might have called the cleverest of everything if not for the last thing. A second jar to go with the first.
"Hair wash?"
"Aye. It's made of water, soap, lavender oil, rosemary oil, chamomile oil and beer."
How did her son come up with these things?
Brandon smiled wryly, reading the thoughts on her face. "I only dreamed up the recipe. The men and women who worked on it are the ones who deserve the praises. Incidentally, they've also begged to keep it a trade secret." He looked at his father then. "We might want to come up with an invention record of some sort before guilds start seeping up from the south to choke us all."
"You don't say," Rickard said dryly, inspecting his own gift. "When did you even have time for all this? There's barely any time in the day when you're out of my sight."
Brandon snorted. "I didn't do shit. I just wrote and sketched a few papers. Martyn's the one who went and made everything happen. I'm told he had to push and prod and soothe the egos of a lot of jealous craftsmen for this, so please criticise thoroughly."
"So that's why he came asking about boundaries of confidence. It wasn't about his leeway, it was about yours." Rickard examined what had to be the strangest razor ever dreamed up. It looked like a tiny flat shovelhead with the handle sticking out the broad side rather than the edge. There were spare blades too. Astonishingly thin. Lyarra couldn't guess how they were supposed to be mounted in. Rickard eventually put it down and moved to something else. "What's this?" he asked, indicating one of three jars, rather than two.
"Soap and olive oil plus extract of cloves kept at a low boil in water. Otherwise known as shaving cream." Brandon made a strangely conflicted face then. "To be honest, I'd rather you didn't use it."
"Oh?"
"… Your beard is the best."
Lyarra had to cover her laughter.
"Is that so?" Rickard asked, enjoying his son's embarrassment. "And here I'd thought this was for our soon to be hosts."
"Oh no, theirs are back in my room and the cases aren't half as fancy. These are all for you. Anyway," Brandon hastily changed the subject. "This should hopefully suit you better." Brandon leaned it to grab a small bottle of green glass and held it in the window light. "Almond and rosemary oils. The best mix of all the ones immediately available, I've been assured. I call it beard polish. May I?"
Rickard peered at his son for a long moment but nodded slowly and leaned close.
Brandon uncorked the bottle, poured a small amount in his hand and set about carefully kneading it through his father's beard, pulling and tugging and straightening it for several minutes. Lyarra kept silent so as not to distract them. Rickard had once tried to use some Essosi import, but it tasted foul and rubbed off too easily on everything – especially her – so he soon gave up on the idea. Now, as she watched his face literally transform before her eyes, she found herself hoping this wouldn't end the same.
Once he was done, Brandon wiped his hands on a cloth. "What do you plan to wear today?"
Rickard's eyebrows flew upwards but he told him.
Nodding, her son then reached into the case and picked out what turned out to be hair clasps. There were twenty in total, five each of bronze, iron, steel and wood carved with their house crest at the front. He chose three of the first and used them to anchor Rickard's now well-groomed beard in three wide queues, the longest in the middle. Lyarra could already see all five or more of the rest find their own places in that tableau, if her husband ever decided to let his beard grow further. Which, she thought upon seeing the intense gaze he'd locked on Brandon, was probably a given now.
"Where did you get the bottle?"
Brandon started.
Rickard's gaze sharpened and he did one of the things he disliked the most. He repeated himself. "Where did you get the bottle, son?"
"… I suppose this is the time to mention the North has glassblowers as of yesterday?"
Lyarra Stark suddenly experienced the strange urge to facepalm. She didn't. She at least was enough a lady not to lapse that far. It was a very close thing though.
Her husband, on the other hand, pinched his nosebridge, took a deep breath, stood up, picked Brandon off the chair, set him on the floor, knelt down and embraced him. Tight. Long. Long enough for the snow shrikes outside to trill the last chimes of their dawn chorus.
Eventually, Rickard let go but didn't pull back. He instead laid his hands on his son's shoulders and let his brow rest on his. Brandon… didn't stiffen or shrink in embarrassment like Ned might have. He didn't preen like Benjen would have. He didn't gloat either, like Lyanna would have done. Instead he… eased. Loosened. Relaxed into a deep, fervent sort of contentment that Lyarra had seldom ever seen, and never so heartfelt.
Watching them, she couldn't help but feel a jealous pang. Seven years she stood by her son through every hardship and frenzy and fit of madness while Rickard shunned them both. And now the man swoops in and fixes everything in a single moonturn. Did Rickard even know his son now? What did dreams count for, really? Did he know what he liked to eat? To drink? Did he know that he'd mused on and off about an obstacle course to run each day in the mornings? Or that Brandon's favourite way to have fun was skulking around in that quiet way of his and peer around corners from half-way up to the ground, scaring every scullery maid that passed by? Surely not!
She had a favourite, Lyarra Stark thought wanly. And now it seemed she knew what her punishment was for it. Her son also had a favourite. He had a favourite and it wasn't her.
"I'm proud of you, son." Rickard said, as if he hadn't already won every last drop of his son's undying awe and admiration and love and devotion and - "But if Myrish assassins come after you in a few years, I will be very upset." What's this, now? "Or are you going to claim you somehow don't also know the secret to clear glassblowing?"
"Oh Myr's whole schtick is such bullshit!" Brandon burst out of nowehere, backing off and throwing his hands in the air. "Glass is literally just sand, ash and lime! You just mix them up and melt them in a kiln. Martyn barely finished listing the ingredients before working mixes were being thrown around by five different people, to hear him say it. And the best one didn't even come from a builder or smith or even a jeweller. It was a farmer. You know, the one whose wife randomly came up with a pressure cooker while we were working with her smith brother on the aluminium smelter? Half the night spent walking back the old dream lane for the details, wasted. And there's no clear glass blowing, it's all in the materials. I don't know all the finicky ingredients if you want glass clear and smooth enough for mirrors or lenses, but that's just if you're working with shit sand and ash to begin with, and even Walys should be able to figure those out!" Brandon then went on a long, ranting spiel about monopolies, iron impurities, the Free Cities scamming everyone on glass tinting, and how Dorne was either fucking with the rest of the world or filled with nothing but morons if they didn't have their own glass production after so much time in the sand. "The worst thing is I can't even hold it against the Myrish," Brandon finally said. Growled, almost. "If you've got a valuable product, of course you'll want to make it a trade secret!"
"Well now," Rickard said once Brandon finally wound down, nonplussed. "You seem to have strong feelings about this."
"You think!?"
"Do not snap at me, son."
Unless it suits your father to let you divulge every last one of your latest and greatest accomplishments, Lyarra thought crossly.
Her son seemed to remember whose presence he was in, though, finally. He took a few of his strange, staggered deep breaths to master himself. "Right. I'm sorry, Father. I apologise."
"Forgiven. Now is there anything else you'd like to share that you might be harbouring strong feelings about?"
"… I don't know, the hair wash maybe? There's an ingredient the tradesmen could only get from olive oil – a cook figured it out actually – and we barely import enough of that for special occasions. I don't suppose you have contacts across the sea that can ask about alternatives? Say a bean that only grows in Yi Ti, maybe? Your jar's made with cedar instead of lavender by the way, apparently."
"That I can do, though it will have to wait until spring for obvious reasons."
Brandon, who'd resumed the pacing he'd devolved into mid-way through his tirade, stopped and looked at his father in surprise. "Wait, really?"
"You have my permission to visit the dreams of the Company of the Rose sometime," Rickard said dryly. "We also rule half the continent, son, and have a legion of traders. I really shouldn't have to explain this. Anything else?"
"… I suppose there's two things." Brandon went to the satchel and pulled out… four copper plaques. Two had the direwolf sigil of their house emblazoned. The other two did not. "I thought to put the names of the makers on the lid." Rickard accepted one and Lyarra took the other to inspect more closely. It had a pair of names cast with an odd symbol in between. Luwys & Hus. Below them was written 'Made in Winterfell'. "What do you think?"
"I think it's rather sweet," Lyarra said. And she meant it.
"… I think you've started something significant," Rickard eventually agreed after thinking on his answer. "We'll honour the makers."
"Great!" To their surprise, Brandon then produced the thinnest and sharpest chisel she'd ever seen, which he then used to fasten the plaques on the spot with nails that, rather than being beaten in, instead spun and sunk into the wood on twisting treads.
Rickard stared at their son, picked up one of the "I call them screws!" to inspect, stared at it for far too long a time while turning it between his fingers, then leaned back and literally looked to the heavens for strength. Considering that was the opposite direction of where their Gods made their place, nothing else need be said on the matter.
"Oh come on, Dad! It's not like it's anything new," Brandon groused. "It's what we use in fruit presses. It's not my fault no one bothered to make them small before. I bet everyone in the Free Cities is laughing at us. I don't even want to think about Yi Ti."
"Never mind," Rickard grunted. "Just get whatever's left out of the way before I change my mind."
"Fine," Brandon huffed. "Maybe we should just rip it off like a scab. Fair warning though, it might just be the biggest decision of your lives. I know bringing it up at all is going to be the biggest decision of mine."
Lyarra suddenly felt deeply concerned about what was about to follow. The feeling only increased as Brandon took a deep breath and had to physically, visibly resolve himself to –
"Should I put a razor and shaving cream in the woman kit too?"
For a terrible moment, Lady Lyarra of House Stark couldn't understand what she'd just heard. Then she did. "Wha-! Well I never!"
"Yeow!" Brandon barely ducked out of the way of the pillow she threw at him to hide behind his father. "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"
"Think that was funny, do you!?" The woman hissed. She lunched around her husband. And when that failed, she grabbed her pillow from the floor and threw it again. Rickard managed to lean away in time, but Brandon had long since jumped on the bed to hide behind him again. "Come here you-you… you miscreant!"
"Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" Brandon howled. Then he lunged across the room, threw her pillow back in her face – the outrage! – and dashed out the door laughing like the devil she'd spent years trying to convince herself he wasn't. In vain, as it now turned out. "You'll never take me alive!"
"You won't escape me you little monster!" She hollered after him in the most un-lady like display of her married life. "I'll get you back for this, mark my words!"
A truly alien sound appeared then. One she'd only ever heard once in the past seven years, back at the fair. Her husband. Laughing. More freely, loudly and uproariously than ever before. And he didn't stop until he was good and ready, the brute. Because why should he care about her feelings? He was only her husband. Lyarra huffed, tossed her hair, turned away from him, went to her vanity and proceeded to make herself ready for the day while pretending her husband didn't exist.
She didn't last a minute. Once she heard him start picking things out of his newest gift, she shifted in her seat despite herself to watch his reflection. Then she gave it up as a bad job and turned enough to watch him properly.
Rickard took out the items he'd chosen, closely handled them for a minute or two each as if to memorise their feel, then he took off the beard clasps his son had so affectionately put in. After that, he went to their wash basin, washed his face with the scented soap, brushed his teeth with a generous serving of paste, and spent an equal amount of time cleaning every nook and cranny of his mouth he could reach. The foam made an ugly spectacle of him, and it ruined whatever grooming hadn't already washed away with the water. But Rickard cleaned himself off once more, faithfully oiled his beard all over again, and then found a way to secure it with not three but all five of the bronze clasps he'd been given. Even without his crown, he looked like the King of Winter come again.
Then he turned around, strode to her, pulled her out of her seat and gave her the longest, fiercest, stormiest, fieriest, most toe-curling kiss Lyarra Stark had ever received in her life. The skin on his face felt smooth as marble, his beard was like steel wire wrapped up in silk, his tongue tasted like ice straight from the sea, and his breath was akin to the coolest wind beating down from the mountaintops.
When he pulled away she was left light-headed, and all her attempts to say anything ended in moans and whimpers, damn him.
"Was that to your liking, wife?"
"You're the worst," Lyarra gasped. Plaintively. "You know it was."
"Good." Rickard abruptly let go of her, walked away, sat on his chair and gazed expectantly as her mind failed its first few tries to catch up what he then said. "Now live up to your man's example, woman."
When she finally did, she gaped at him, affronted. "Well I never!" She was lost for words as well, it seemed.
Her husband crossed his arms and beheld her, completely unimpressed.
So just to be petty, she turned her nose at him and stormed out of the room in her nightrobe. She'll just get her maids and prepare for the day in her old chambers, let's see him posture then!
She would never find the words to describe the torture that she went through that whole day. When she ordered the servants not to serve Brandon anything but bland porridge, Rickard summoned him for an errand with promises of jerky and mulled wine to go. When she went down to the cellars to check for some of that new maple syrup, her husband and son didn't even seem to notice her pointed dismissal of them both as she passed the training yard. When dinner came and Brandon goggled at Benjen's humming of something or other instead of showing even a token fear at her gimlet eye, she felt fit to tie him up and shave all his hair off. And whenever her eyes strayed to her husband, Rickard was already watching her. Always. Waited until she turned to meet his eyes and then smirked at her.
Curse this fate, curse her man, and curse the Gods for landing her in the only marriage in the world where the woman was the more wanton one.
That night she bathed in blue roses, washed her hair in lavender, cleaned her mouth with lemon salt, spent far too long tending to her hands, and then surrendered to the longest, hardest, most ardent night of lovemaking of her entire life. Then the morning came and she did it all over again.
The snowstorm that welcomed them once they emerged from their chambers threatened to ruin it all. It thinned and stopped completely before even noon came, but she didn't need to ride out to know all roads would be snowed in. But her husband had been working on projects of his own too. Most importantly, a sledhouse. It forced them to leave most of their retinue and supplies behind, but what few sled dogs they had proved sufficient to bear them hence. The Cerwyns were very surprised that afternoon when they arrived, pulled forth by hounds and bracketed by Winterfell's ski detachment.
Then they attended the fair and learned a common lumberjack had stumbled upon a find that outdid every one of her son's combined.
Brandon's madness had already caught outside Winterfell, Lyarra thought testily.
She should have expected it really.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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stone