A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

now?”
    â€œNot for a long time, sweet one,” he told her. “He needs to win his strength back.”
    Arya bit her lip. “What will Bran do when he’s of age?”
    Ned knelt beside her. “He has years to find that answer, Arya. For now, it is enough to know that he will live.” The night the bird had come from Winterfell, Eddard Stark had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned’s cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon’s breath surrounded the girls where they lay. “I dreamed of Bran,” Sansa had whispered to him. “I saw him smiling.”
    â€œHe was going to be a knight,” Arya was saying now. “A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he still be a knight?”
    â€œNo,” Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. “Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king’s council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother’s Faith and become the High Septon.”
But he will never run beside his wolf again
, he thought with a sadness too deep for words,
or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms
.
    Arya cocked her head to one side. “Can I be a king’s councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?”
    â€œYou,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon.”
    Arya screwed up her face. “No,” she said, “that’s
Sansa.”
She folded up her right leg and resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there.
    Inside his chambers, he stripped off his sweat-stained silks and sluiced cold water over his head from the basin beside the bed. Alyn entered as he was drying his face. “My lord,” he said, “Lord Baelish is without and begs audience.”
    â€œEscort him to my solar,” Ned said, reaching for a fresh tunic, the lightest linen he could find. “I’ll see him at once.”
    Littlefinger was perched on the window seat when Ned entered, watching the knights of the Kingsguard practice at swords in the yard below. “If only old Selmy’s mind were as nimble as his blade,” he said wistfully, “our council meetings would be a good deal livelier.”
    â€œSer Barristan is as valiant and honorable as any man in King’s Landing.” Ned had come to have a deep respect for the aged, white-haired Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
    â€œAnd as tiresome,” Littlefinger added, “though I daresay he should do well in the tourney. Last year he unhorsed the Hound, and it was only four years ago that he was champion.”
    The question of who might win the tourney interested Eddard Stark not in the least. “Is there a reason for thisvisit, Lord Petyr, or are you here simply to enjoy the view from my window?”
    Littlefinger smiled. “I promised Cat I would help you in your inquiries, and so I have.”
    That took Ned aback. Promise or no promise, he could not find it in him to trust Lord Petyr Baelish, who struck him as too clever by half. “You have something for me?”
    â€œSomeone,” Littlefinger corrected. “Four someones, if truth be told. Had you thought to question the Hand’s servants?”
    Ned frowned. “Would that I could. Lady Arryn took her household back to the Eyrie.” Lysa had done him no favor in that regard. All those who had stood closest to her husband had gone with her when she fled: Jon’s maester, his steward, the captain of his guard, his knights and retainers.
    â€œMost
of her household,” Littlefinger said, “not all. A few remain. A pregnant kitchen girl hastily wed to one of Lord Renly’s grooms, a stablehand who joined the City Watch, a potboy discharged from service for theft, and Lord Arryn’s squire.”
    â€œHis squire?” Ned was pleasantly surprised. A man’s squire often knew a great deal of his