A Dance With Dragons

they are going to try to force the Bridge of Skulls again.”
    “Some may.” Could the skulls in her vision have signified this bridge? Somehow Melisandre did not think so. “If it comes, that attack will be no more than a diversion. I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. That is where the heaviest blow will fall.”
    “Eastwatch?”
    Was it? Melisandre had seen Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with King Stannis. That was where His Grace left Queen Selyse and their daughter Shireen when he assembled his knights for the march to Castle Black. The towers in her fire had been different, but that was oft the way with visions. “Yes. Eastwatch, my lord.”
    “When?”
    She spread her hands. “On the morrow. In a moon’s turn. In a year. And it may be that if you act, you may avert what I have seen entirely.” Else what would be the point of visions?
    “Good,” said Snow.
    The crowd of crows beyond the gate had swollen to two score by the time they emerged from beneath the Wall. The men pressed close about them. Melisandre knew a few by name: the cook Three-Finger Hobb, Mully with his greasy orange hair, the dim-witted boy called Owen the Oaf, the drunkard Septon Celladar.
    “Is it true, m’lord?” said Three-Finger Hobb. “Who is it?” asked Owen the Oaf. “Not Dywen, is it?”
    “Nor Garth,” said the queen’s man she knew as Alf of Runnymudd, one of the first to exchange his seven false gods for the truth of R’hllor. “Garth’s too clever for them wildlings.”
    “How many?” Mully asked.
    “Three,” Jon told them. “Black Jack, Hairy Hal, and Garth.”
    Alf of Runnymudd let out a howl loud enough to wake sleepers in the Shadow Tower. “Put him to bed and get some mulled wine into him,” Jon told Three-Finger Hobb.
    “Lord Snow,” Melisandre said quietly. “Will you come with me to the King’s Tower? I have more to share with you.”
    He looked at her face for a long moment with those cold grey eyes of his. His right hand closed, opened, closed again. “As you wish. Edd, take Ghost back to my chambers.”
    Melisandre took that as a sign and dismissed her own guard as well. They crossed the yard together, just the two of them. The snow fell all around them. She walked as close to Jon Snow as she dared, close enough to feel the mistrust pouring off him like a black fog. He does not love me, will never love me, but he will make use of me. Well and good. Melisandre had danced the same dance with Stannis Baratheon, back in the beginning. In truth, the young lord commander and her king had more in common than either one would ever be willing to admit. Stannis had been a younger son living in the shadow of his elder brother, just as Jon Snow, bastard-born, had always been eclipsed by his trueborn sibling, the fallen hero men had called the Young Wolf. Both men were unbelievers by nature, mistrustful, suspicious. The only gods they truly worshiped were honor and duty.
    “You have not asked about your sister,” Melisandre said, as they climbed the spiral steps of the King’s Tower.
    “I told you. I have no sister. We put aside our kin when we say our words. I cannot help Arya, much as I—”
    He broke off as they stepped inside her chambers. The wildling was within, seated at her board, spreading butter on a ragged chunk of warm brown bread with his dagger. He had donned the bone armor, she was pleased to see. The broken giant’s skull that was his helm rested on the window seat behind him.
    Jon Snow tensed. “You.”
    “Lord Snow.” The wildling grinned at them through a mouth of brown and broken teeth. The ruby on his wrist glimmered in the morning light like a dim red star.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Breaking my fast. You’re welcome to share.”
    “I’ll not break bread with you.”
    “Your loss. The loaf’s still warm. Hobb can do that much, at least.” The wildling ripped off a bite. “I could visit you as easily, my lord. Those guards at your door are a bad jape. A man who has climbed the Wall half a hundred times can climb in a window easy enough. But what good would come of killing you? The crows would only choose someone worse.” He chewed, swallowed. “I heard about your rangers. You should have sent me with them.”
    “So you could betray them to the Weeper?”
    “Are we talking about betrayals? What was the name of that wildling wife of yours, Snow? Ygritte, wasn’t it?” The wildling turned to Melisandre. “I will need horses. Half