A Dance With Dragons

was trapped here, with the ghosts. The old ghosts from the crypts and the younger ones that he had made himself, Mikken and Farlen, Gynir Rednose, Aggar, Gelmarr the Grim, the miller’s wife from Acorn Water and her two young sons, and all the rest. My work. My ghosts. They are all here, and they are angry. He thought of the crypts and those missing swords.
    Theon returned to his own chambers. He was stripping off his wet clothes when Steelshanks Walton found him. “Come with me, turncloak. His lordship wants words with you.”
    He had no clean dry clothes, so he wriggled back into the same damp rags and followed. Steelshanks led him back to the Great Keep and the solar that had once been Eddard Stark’s. Lord Bolton was not alone. Lady Dustin sat with him, pale-faced and severe; an iron horsehead brooch clasped Roger Ryswell’s cloak; Aenys Frey stood near the fire, pinched cheeks flushed with cold.
    “I am told you have been wandering the castle,” Lord Bolton began. “Men have reported seeing you in the stables, in the kitchens, in the barracks, on the battlements. You have been observed near the ruins of collapsed keeps, outside Lady Catelyn’s old sept, coming and going from the godswood. Do you deny it?”
    “No, m’lord.” Theon made sure to muddy up the word. He knew that pleased Lord Bolton. “I cannot sleep, m’lord. I walk.” He kept his head down, fixed upon the old stale rushes scattered on the floor. It was not wise to look his lordship in the face.
    “I was a boy here before the war. A ward of Eddard Stark.”
    “You were a hostage,” Bolton said. “Yes, m’lord. A hostage.” It was my home, though. Not a true home, but the best I ever knew.
    “Someone has been killing my men.”
    “Yes, m’lord.”
    “Not you, I trust?” Bolton’s voice grew even softer. “You would not repay all my kindnesses with such treachery.”
    “No, m’lord, not me. I wouldn’t. I … only walk, is all.”
    Lady Dustin spoke up. “Take off your gloves.”
    Theon glanced up sharply. “Please, no. I … I …”
    “Do as she says,” Ser Aenys said. “Show us your hands.”
    Theon peeled his gloves off and held his hands up for them to see. It is not as if I stand before them naked. It is not so bad as that. His left hand had three fingers, his right four. Ramsay had taken only the pinky off the one, the ring finger and forefingers from the other.
    “The Bastard did this to you,” Lady Dustin said. “If it please m’lady, I … I asked it of him.” Ramsay always made him ask. Ramsay always makes me beg.
    “Why would you do that?”
    “I … I did not need so many fingers.”
    “Four is enough.” Ser Aenys Frey fingered the wispy brown beard that sprouted from his weak chin like a rat’s tail. “Four on his right hand. He could still hold a sword. A dagger.”
    Lady Dustin laughed. “Are all Freys such fools? Look at him. Hold a dagger? He hardly has the strength to hold a spoon. Do you truly think he could have overcome the Bastard’s disgusting creature and shoved his manhood down his throat?”
    “These dead were all strong men,” said Roger Ryswell, “and none of them were stabbed. The turncloak’s not our killer.”
    Roose Bolton’s pale eyes were fixed on Theon, as sharp as Skinner’s flaying knife. “I am inclined to agree. Strength aside, he does not have it in him to betray my son.”
    Roger Ryswell grunted. “If not him, who? Stannis has some man inside the castle, that’s plain.”
    Reek is no man. Not Reek. Not me. He wondered if Lady Dustin had told them about the crypts, the missing swords.
    “We must look at Manderly,” muttered Ser Aenys Frey. “Lord Wyman loves us not.”
    Ryswell was not convinced. “He loves his steaks and chops and meat pies, though. Prowling the castle by dark would require him to leave the table. The only time he does that is when he seeks the privy for one of his hourlong squats.”
    “I do not claim Lord Wyman does the deeds himself. He brought three hundred men with him. A hundred knights. Any of them might have—”
    “Night work is not knight’s work,” Lady Dustin said. “And Lord Wyman is not the only man who lost kin at your Red Wedding, Frey. Do you imagine Whoresbane loves you any better? If you did not hold the Greatjon, he would pull out your entrails and make you eat them, as Lady Hornwood ate her fingers. Flints, Cerwyns, Tallharts, Slates … they all had men with the Young Wolf.”
    “House Ryswell too,”