A Feast for Dragons

stuck so fast that it
was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to
force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements,
the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its
wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the
foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud,
the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince
Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d
been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.”
As if that could
impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall
.
    Griffin’s Roost
had
been his, eventually, if
only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands
extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and
his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had
never lost their lands. He had.
I rose too high, loved too hard, dared
too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell
.
    After the Battle of the Bells, when Aerys Targaryen had
stripped him of his titles and sent him into exile in a mad fit of ingratitude
and suspicion, the lands and lordship had remained within House Connington,
passing to his cousin Ser Ronald, the man whom Jon had made his castellan when
he went to King’s Landing to attend Prince Rhaegar. Robert Baratheon had
completed the destruction of the griffins after the war. Cousin Ronald was
permitted to retain his castle and his head, but he lost his lordship,
thereafter being merely the Knight of Griffin’s Roost, and nine-tenths of his
lands were taken from him and parceled out to neighbor lords who had supported
Robert’s claim.
    Ronald Connington had died years before. The present Knight
of Griffin’s Roost, his son Ronnet, was said to be off at war in the riverlands.
That was for the best. In Jon Connington’s experience, men would fight for
things they felt were theirs, even things they’d gained by theft. He did not
relish the notion of celebrating his return by killing one of his own kin. Red
Ronnet’s sire had been quick to take advantage of his lord cousin’s downfall,
true, but his son had been a child at the time. Jon Connington did not even
hate the late Ser Ronald as much as he might have. The fault was his.
    He had lost it all at Stoney Sept, in his arrogance.
    Robert Baratheon had been hiding somewhere in the town,
wounded and alone. Jon Connington had known that, and he had also known that
Robert’s head upon a spear would have put an end to the rebellion, then and
there. He was young and full of pride. How not? King Aerys had named him Hand
and given him an army, and he meant to prove himself worthy of that trust, of
Rhaegar’s love. He would slay the rebel lord himself and carve a place out for
himself in all the histories of the Seven Kingdoms.
    And so he swept down on Stoney Sept, closed off the town,
and began a search. His knights went house to house, smashed in every door,
peered into every cellar. He had even sent men crawling through the sewers, yet
somehow Robert still eluded him. The townsfolk were
hiding
him.
They moved him from one secret bolt-hole to the next, always one step ahead of
the king’s men. The whole town was a nest of traitors. At the end they had the
usurper hidden in a brothel. What sort of king was that, who would hide behind
the skirts of women? Yet whilst the search dragged on, Eddard Stark and Hoster
Tully came down upon the town with a rebel army. Bells and battle followed, and
Robert emerged from his brothel with a blade in hand, and almost slew Jon on
the steps of the old sept that gave the town its name.
    For years afterward, Jon Connington told himself that he was
not to blame, that he had done all that any man could do. His soldiers searched
every hole and hovel, he offered pardons and rewards, he took hostages and hung
them in crow cages and swore that they would have neither food nor drink until
Robert was delivered to him. All to no avail. “Tywin Lannister himself could
have done no more,” he had insisted one night to Blackheart, during his first
year of exile.
    “There is where you’re wrong,” Myles Toyne had replied.
“Lord Tywin would not have bothered with a search. He would have burned that
town and every living creature in it. Men and boys, babes at the breast, noble
knights