A Feast for Dragons

gone.
Only Winterfell remained.
    He 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