A Feast for Dragons

that’d frighten any woman. I always wanted me
one with a mustache.” Then he laughed and laughed.
    He would not be laughing now
.
    Jon had wasted enough time here. “I’m sorry to have troubled
Your Grace. The Night’s Watch will attend to this matter.”
    The queen’s nostrils flared. “You still mean to ride to
Hardhome. I see it on your face.
Let them die
, I said, yet you
will persist in this mad folly. Do not deny it.”
    “I must do as I think best. With respect, Your Grace, the
Wall is mine, and so is this decision.”
    “It is,” Selyse allowed, “and you will answer for it when the
king returns. And for other decisions you have made, I fear. But I see that you
are deaf to sense. Do what you must.”
    Up spoke Ser Malegorn. “Lord Snow, who will lead this
ranging?”
    “Are you offering yourself, ser?”
    “Do I look so foolish?”
    Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang
merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will
ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh,
oh, oh.”
    They all laughed. Even Queen Selyse allowed herself a thin
smile. Jon was less amused. “I will not ask my men to do what I would not do
myself. I mean to lead the ranging.”
    “How bold of you,” said the queen. “We approve. Afterward
some bard will make a stirring song about you, no doubt, and we shall have a more
prudent lord commander.” She took a sip of wine. “Let us speak of other
matters. Axell, bring in the wildling king, if you would be so good.”
    “At once, Your Grace.” Ser Axell went through a door and
returned a moment later with Gerrick Kingsblood. “Gerrick of House Redbeard,”
he announced, “King of the Wildlings.”
    Gerrick Kingsblood was a tall man, long of leg and broad of
shoulder. The queen had dressed him in some of the king’s old clothes, it appeared.
Scrubbed and groomed, clad in green velvets and an ermine half-cape, with his
long red hair freshly washed and his fiery beard shaped and trimmed, the
wildling looked every inch a southron lord.
He could walk into the
throne room at King’s Landing, and no one would blink an eye
, Jon
thought.
    “Gerrick is the true and rightful king of the wildlings,”
the queen said, “descended in an unbroken male line from their great king
Raymun Redbeard, whereas the usurper Mance Rayder was born of some common woman
and fathered by one of your black brothers.”
    No
, Jon might have said,
Gerrick is
descended from a younger brother of Raymun Redbeard
. To the free folk
that counted about as much as being descended from Raymun Redbeard’s horse.
They
know nothing, Ygritte. And worse, they will not learn
.
    “Gerrick has graciously agreed to give the hand of his
eldest daughter to my beloved Axell, to be united by the Lord of Light in holy
wedlock,” Queen Selyse said. “His other girls shall wed at the same time—the
second daughter with Ser Brus Buckler and the youngest with Ser Malegorn of
Redpool.”
    “Sers.” Jon inclined his head to the knights in question.
“May you find happiness with your betrothed.”
    “Under the sea, men marry fishes.” Patchface did a little
dance step, jingling his bells. “They do, they do, they do.”
    Queen Selyse sniffed again. “Four marriages can be made as
simply as three. It is past time that this woman Val was settled, Lord Snow. I
have decided that she shall wed my good and leal knight, Ser Patrek of King’s
Mountain.”
    “Has Val been told, Your Grace?” asked Jon. “Amongst the
free folk, when a man desires a woman, he steals her, and thus proves his
strength, his cunning, and his courage. The suitor risks a savage beating if he
is caught by the woman’s kin, and worse than that if she herself finds him
unworthy.”
    “A savage custom,” Axell Florent said.
    Ser Patrek only chuckled. “No man has ever had cause to
question my courage. No woman ever will.”
    Queen Selyse pursed her lips. “Lord Snow, as Lady Val is a
stranger to our ways, please send her to me, that I might instruct her in the
duties of a noble lady toward her lord husband.”
    That will go splendidly, I know
. Jon
wondered if the queen would be so eager to see Val married to one of her own
knights if she knew Val’s feelings about Princess Shireen. “As you wish,” he
said, “though if I might speak freely—”
    “No, I think not. You may take your leave of us.”
    Jon Snow bent his knee, bowed his head, withdrew.
    He took