A Feast for Dragons

“As he says. There will
be time enough to fight each other once we are done with Stannis.” He turned
his head, his pale cold eyes searching the hall until they found the bard Abel
beside Theon. “Singer,” he called, “come sing us something soothing.”
    Abel bowed. “If it please your lordship.” Lute in hand, he
sauntered to the dais, hopping nimbly over a corpse or two, and seated himself
cross-legged on the high table. As he began to play—a sad, soft song that Theon
Greyjoy did not recognize—Ser Hosteen, Ser Aenys, and their fellow Freys turned
away to lead their horses from the hall.
    Rowan grasped Theon’s arm. “The bath. It must be now.”
    He wrenched free of her touch. “By day? We will be seen.”
    “The snow will hide us. Are you deaf? Bolton is sending
forth his swords. We have to reach King Stannis before they do.”
    “But … Abel …”
    “Abel can fend for himself,” murmured Squirrel.
    This is madness. Hopeless, foolish, doomed
.
Theon drained the last dregs of his ale and rose reluctantly to his feet. “Find
your sisters. It takes a deal of water to fill my lady’s tub.”
    Squirrel slipped away, soft-footed as she always was. Rowan
walked Theon from the hall. Since she and her sisters had found him in the
godswood, one of them had dogged his every step, never letting him out of
sight. They did not trust him.
Why should they? I was Reek before and
might be Reek again. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with sneak
.
    Outside the snow still fell. The snowmen the squires had
built had grown into monstrous giants, ten feet tall and hideously misshapen.
White walls rose to either side as he and Rowan made their way to the godswood;
the paths between keep and tower and hall had turned into a maze of icy
trenches, shoveled out hourly to keep them clear. It was easy to get lost in
that frozen labyrinth, but Theon Greyjoy knew every twist and turning.
    Even the godswood was turning white. A film of ice had
formed upon the pool beneath the heart tree, and the face carved into its pale
trunk had grown a mustache of little icicles. At this hour they could not hope
to have the old gods to themselves. Rowan pulled Theon away from the northmen
praying before the tree, to a secluded spot back by the barracks wall, beside a
pool of warm mud that stank of rotten eggs. Even the mud was icing up about the
edges, Theon saw. “Winter is coming …”
    Rowan gave him a hard look. “You have no right to mouth Lord
Eddard’s words. Not you. Not ever. After what you did—”
    “You killed a boy as well.”
    “That was not us. I told you.”
    “Words are wind.”
They are no better than me. We’re
just the same
. “You killed the others, why not him? Yellow Dick—”
    “—stank as bad as you. A pig of a man.”
    “And Little Walder was a piglet. Killing him brought the
Freys and Manderlys to dagger points, that was cunning, you—”
    “Not us.”
Rowan grabbed him by the throat
and shoved him back against the barracks wall, her face an inch from his. “Say
it again and I will rip your lying tongue out, kinslayer.”
    He smiled through his broken teeth. “You won’t. You need my
tongue to get you past the guards. You need my lies.”
    Rowan spat in his face. Then she let him go and wiped her
gloved hands on her legs, as if just touching him had soiled her.
    Theon knew he should not goad her. In her own way, this one
was as dangerous as Skinner or Damon Dance-for-Me. But he was cold and tired,
his head was pounding, he had not slept in days. “I have done terrible
things … betrayed my own, turned my cloak, ordered the death of men
who trusted me … but I am no kinslayer.”
    “Stark’s boys were never brothers to you, aye. We know.”
    That was true, but it was not what Theon had meant.
They
were not my blood, but even so, I never harmed them. The two we killed were
just some miller’s sons
. Theon did not want to think about their
mother. He had known the miller’s wife for years, had even bedded her.
Big
heavy breasts with wide dark nipples, a sweet mouth, a merry laugh. Joys that I
will never taste again
.
    But there was no use telling Rowan any of that. She would
never believe his denials, any more than he believed hers. “There is blood on
my hands, but not the blood of brothers,” he said wearily. “And I’ve been
punished.”
    “Not enough.” Rowan turned her back on him.
    Foolish woman
. He might well be a broken
thing, but Theon still wore a dagger. It would have been