A Dance With Dragons

“Uncle, may I ask you a question?”
    “Whatever you wish.”
    “Your wife … do you mean to bring her to court?”
    “No.” Dorna was a gentle soul, never comfortable but at home with friends and kin around her. She had done well by their children, dreamed of having grandchildren, prayed seven times a day, loved needlework and flowers. In King’s Landing she would be as happy as one of Tommen’s kittens in a pit of vipers. “My lady wife mislikes travel. Lannisport is her place.”
    “It is a wise woman who knows her place.”
    He did not like the sound of that. “Say what you mean.”
    “I thought I did.” Cersei held out her cup. The freckled girl filled it once again. The cream cakes appeared then, and the conversation took a lighter turn. Only after Tommen and his kittens were escorted off to the royal bedchamber by Ser Boros did their talk turn to the queen’s trial.
    “Osney’s brothers will not stand by idly and watch him die,” Cersei warned him.
    “I did not expect that they would. I’ve had the both of them arrested.” That seemed to take her aback. “For what crime?”
    “Fornication with a queen. His High Holiness says that you confessed to bedding both of them—had you forgotten?”
    Her face reddened. “No. What will you do with them?”
    “The Wall, if they admit their guilt. If they deny it, they can face Ser Robert. Such men should never have been raised so high.”
    Cersei lowered her head. “I … I misjudged them.”
    “You misjudged a good many men, it seems.”
    He might have said more, but the dark-haired novice with the round cheeks returned to say, “My lord, my lady, I am sorry to intrude, but there is a boy below. Grand Maester Pycelle begs the favor of the Lord Regent’s presence at once.”
    Dark wings, dark words , Ser Kevan thought. Could Storm’s End have fallen? Or might this be word from Bolton in the north?
    “It might be news of Jaime,” the queen said.
    There was only one way to know. Ser Kevan rose. “Pray excuse me.” Before he took his leave, he dropped to one knee and kissed his niece upon the hand. If her silent giant failed her, it might be the last kiss she would ever know.
    The messenger was a boy of eight or nine, so bundled up in fur he seemed a bear cub. Trant had kept him waiting out on the drawbridge rather than admit him into Maegor’s. “Go find a fire, lad,” Ser Kevan told him, pressing a penny into his hand. “I know the way to the rookery well enough.”
    The snow had finally stopped falling. Behind a veil of ragged clouds, a full moon floated fat and white as a snowball. The stars shone cold and distant. As Ser Kevan made his way across the inner ward, the castle seemed an alien place, where every keep and tower had grown icy teeth, and all familiar paths had vanished beneath a white blanket. Once an icicle long as a spear fell to shatter by his feet. Autumn in King’s Landing , he brooded. What must it be like up on the Wall?
    The door was opened by a serving girl, a skinny thing in a fur-lined robe much too big for her. Ser Kevan stamped the snow off his boots, removed his cloak, tossed it to her. “The Grand Maester is expecting me,” he announced. The girl nodded, solemn and silent, and pointed to the steps.
    Pycelle’s chambers were beneath the rookery, a spacious suite of rooms cluttered with racks of herbs and salves and potions and shelves jammed full of books and scrolls. Ser Kevan had always found them uncomfortably hot. Not tonight. Once past the chamber door, the chill was palpable. Black ash and dying embers were all that remained of the hearthfire. A few flickering candles cast pools of dim light here and there.
    The rest was shrouded in shadow … except beneath the open window, where a spray of ice crystals glittered in the moonlight, swirling in the wind. On the window seat a raven loitered, pale, huge, its feathers ruffled. It was the largest raven that Kevan Lannister had ever seen. Larger than any hunting hawk at Casterly Rock, larger than the largest owl. Blowing snow danced around it, and the moon painted it silver.
    Not silver. White. The bird is white.
    The white ravens of the Citadel did not carry messages, as their dark cousins did. When they went forth from Oldtown, it was for one purpose only: to herald a change of seasons.
    “Winter,” said Ser Kevan. The word made a white mist in the air. He turned away from the window.
    Then something slammed him in the chest between the ribs, hard as