Maester Aleryn from Castle Cerwyn arrived two days later.
Small man, clean hands, the expression of someone called to a job he hadn't asked for. He walked into my father's solar, reported that he'd sent a raven to the Citadel, that a new maester would arrive within a few weeks, and that in the meantime he was assuming the post so the Warden of the North wouldn't be left without a maester.
My father thanked him. Aleryn settled into Walys's quarters, did what needed doing, asked no questions about how Walys had died beyond the necessary ones, and stayed out of everyone else's way.
He wasn't a bad man. Just someone doing the work while waiting to stop doing it.
The month passed.
Maester Luwin arrived on a cold morning with a change of clothes and two trunks of books.
Young for a maester. Quick eyes, restless hands, a chain with more links than I expected for the age he appeared to be. When he crossed the yard and saw Winterfell for the first time there was a specific restraint in him, the kind from someone who wants to show enthusiasm and decided at some point that it wasn't proper to do so.
Aleryn waited just long enough to make the handover with dignity and left for Castle Cerwyn before the end of the day.
I watched Luwin closely in the weeks that followed. At meals, in the corridors, in how he answered when my father asked him something, in what he read, in what he wrote, in the time between receiving a letter and sending a reply. I looked for the signs I'd learned to recognize in Walys. That displaced attention. The interest slightly too large in the wrong things.
I found nothing.
I ran the test in reverse, gave him information that Walys would have rushed to write to the Citadel the same day. Luwin wrote nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe it wasn't all of them. Maybe Walgrave's conspiracy was more surgical than I'd assumed, specific positions in specific houses at specific moments. Or maybe Luwin was simply a man who had asked for a post in the North and received a post in the North.
I decided to deal with what I'd been putting off.
Orphans weren't hard to find if you knew where to look. I sent word through two Stark soldiers who owed me favors, asked them to look for a specific kind. Not the most docile. The ones who had survived when they weren't supposed to.
They came in over a few days.
I received each one alone, in a small room near the stables. No servants. Just me, a table, two chairs, and however long it took.
--------------------------------
Sigurd walked in like the floor belonged to him.
Six foot three at thirteen years old. Brown hair, amber eyes that sized me up before he reached the chair. The scars on his arms and face weren't from carelessness, they were the kind you earn fighting bigger people and getting out through sheer endurance. Rags on his back, thin beard on his chin, heavy brows. He said nothing when he sat. He waited.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Beyond the Wall." Straight. "My mother was a free woman."
"Was."
"Died giving birth to me." The amber eyes didn't shift. "The southerners figured that made me a wildling too."
"Did it?"
Pause.
"Depends what you call a wildling."
We talked for close to an hour. He'd grown up being pushed from village to village, too big to ignore and too strange to accept. He'd learned to fight early because it was the only language that worked with everyone. He liked a brawl with the honesty of someone who'd never found a reason not to.
When I laid out what I was offering and what I wanted in return, he went quiet for a moment.
"How demanding?"
"Enough to make you want to quit more than once."
Silence.
"When do I start?"
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Eldric came in without making noise.
Wiry, tangled black hair, dark brown eyes that swept the room before he moved, taking stock of everything before deciding where to sit. He sat and stayed quiet with his hands in his lap.
"Crannogman?" I said.
The eyes stopped moving. "How do you know?"
"The look. The way you came in. And the hands."
He went quiet for a second, deciding what to do with that.
"My family lived in the marshes. There were five of us." Dry, no drama. "They were killed. I wasn't home."
"Who did it?"
"A man with the look of a Frey." The eyes showed nothing but certainty. "I have no proof. But I know."
I didn't ask more about that.
He listened to the whole pitch without interrupting. When I finished, he stayed quiet for a moment, his eyes moving around the room without any rush.
"What if I can't take it?"
"You leave. No debts."
He looked at me with the attention of someone checking whether the answer is true.
"I accept."
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Kevin walked in with a smile that knew exactly what it was doing.
Twelve years old, blond hair, blue eyes, the face that creates problems out of nothing. He sat with his elbows on the table in an ease that was calculated just enough to almost be real.
"From the Reach?" I said.
The smile hesitated. "How..."
"The accent. Almost gone, but not quite."
He looked at me for a second with sharp eyes underneath the pose.
"Bastard son of a lord," he said. "I'm not saying which one."
"I don't need to know which one."
That surprised him more than it should have. He was the kind of boy used to everyone wanting exactly what he didn't want to share.
We talked. Kevin was clever in the way of someone who'd learned that showing intelligence is giving an advantage. The irony was the shield. The smile was the shield. The air of someone who doesn't take anything seriously was the shield. Underneath, a pair of eyes that missed nothing.
When I mentioned that women couldn't be a distraction, he raised his hands before I finished.
"Separate."
"The training doesn't wait for your appetite."
"Understood." The smile came back, more genuine this time. "Said by someone who clearly never..."
"Kevin."
He stopped.
"If you don't follow the training properly," I said calmly, "I'll make you a eunuch."
The silence that followed was the quietest he'd been since walking in.
"Right," he said. "When does it start?"
--------------------------------
Perseu came in with the posture of someone who had practiced not looking nervous and almost managed it.
Black hair, blue eyes, tall for his age. He sat straight, hands open on the table, eyes on mine with the attention of someone who wants to show they're actually listening.
"White Harbor," I said.
"Yes."
"Your mother."
He didn't blink. "She worked in the brothels. Died of fever when I was nine." A pause. "The knights used to pass in the street sometimes. I'd watch them from the window."
"And you wanted to be like them."
"I wanted to be better than them." No arrogance. Just fact. "They had honor when it suited them. I wanted the kind that doesn't change."
I stayed quiet for a moment.
"The training I'm going to give you isn't what you read about in the books."
"I know."
"It's harder. It'll demand things those White Harbor knights were never asked to give."
"Then I'll be better than them."
He said it with a simplicity that seemed naive. It wasn't.
"You start next week."
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Rhoslyn arrived with her red curls doing what they wanted and her green eyes taking inventory of the room at a speed that would have gone unnoticed by anyone not paying attention.
Ten years old, normal proportions, a look that stood out in the North in a way she already knew how to use. She sat with the energy of someone who can't quite stay still and looked at me with a directness that was half challenge, half curiosity.
"Where are you from?"
"The Westerlands." Nothing more.
"You ran."
"I came from there."
"There's a difference?"
The green eyes assessed me. "I came from there fast."
I didn't push.
"You have a head for numbers?"
Slightly surprised by the change of subject. "How do you know?"
"I don't. I'm asking."
"Yes." Simple. But the way she said it showed it was more than a head for it. "Always have."
I laid out the training. When I finished she went quiet for a moment with her eyes on the ceiling.
"What if I don't like it?"
"You leave and you don't owe anything."
She stayed quiet a second longer. Made a face at the air as though she was negotiating with an idea.
"I accept."
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Astrid was last.
She came in with her blond braids neat and her blue eyes cold. Sat without rushing. Stayed quiet and waited.
"You don't know who your parents are."
"No." No visible resentment, which was her own form of resentment.
"The orphanage."
"It was a place." Pause. "I'm not there anymore."
I tried to get a conversation going, but Astrid answered with the economy of someone who sees no reason to give more than what's asked. When it got to the training and I mentioned combat, something in her shifted. Subtle. First real sign of interest since she'd walked in.
"Sword?" she said.
"Among other things."
The blue eyes stayed in that place between calculation and decision for a moment.
"I accept."
I gave each of them a day to think.
All six came back.
I took them to the godswood at the end of the afternoon, when the light through the trees had gone low and golden and the shadows were long. The six walked behind me in silence, each in their own way. Sigurd with his heavy, steady step. Eldric almost soundless. Kevin looking at everything with that attention disguised as ease. Perseu straight and quiet. Rhoslyn with her red curls catching the last of the sun. Astrid cold as always.
The weirwood stood at the center of the godswood. White and old, the carved face looking forward with those sap-red eyes that never closed. The silence around it was different from the rest of the wood. Deeper. More present.
"Kneel."
The six knelt on the damp earth of the godswood. The carved face looked at them with the stillness of something that has seen a great deal.
I went to the tree.
I pressed my palm to the white bark.
Hard to explain what happens when I do that. It isn't a voice. It isn't a vision. It's more like everything arriving at once, the temperature of the bark under my hand, the smell of earth and resin, the wood going quieter still or maybe me just stopping hearing it. There's something beneath the bark that pulses at a slowness that doesn't belong to any living thing I know.
Behind me, the six stopped moving.
The red sap started to run from the carved face. From the eyes, the mouth, the nose. Slow and steady, down the white bark and into the bowl I'd left at the base of the tree.
I took my hand away.
I picked up the bowl. The sap was the color of blood and smelled of old wood, something between the two. I took the herbs from my pocket, the ones I'd gathered and ground in the weeks before, and began to mix.
The words came on their own. The Old Tongue coming out not as a decision but as memory of something the body knew before I did. I spoke low. My fingers worked the mixture with a precision I didn't learn in this life.
My hands moved faster.
The mixture darkened. Turned crimson, thick and even, and I knew it was ready without being able to say how I knew.
I split it into six smaller bowls. Opened the leather case, the bone needles in a row, the flask with the red pigment.
I turned to face them.
The six were still kneeling, eyes on the carved face, with the specific stillness of someone in a place they don't fully understand and who decided because of that not to move.
"Take your shirts off."
They did.
I started with Sigurd.
"Drink what's in front of you."
He drank without hesitating.
I went to his back. The runes I'd been drawing in memory for weeks, fine and geometric, following the line of the spine and branching across the shoulders and shoulder blades. Each line corresponded to an acupuncture point, each stroke to a specific nerve or muscle. The ink going in through the bone needle was the tree's sap mixed with the herbs, and the Old Tongue I'd spoken over it while preparing.
It wasn't magic in the sense most people understand magic. The body received nothing impossible. It received what it already had, minus what was blocking it. Senses sharpened. Blood running faster. Muscles and nerves working in a way that takes years of training to approximate.
I worked in silence. From Sigurd to Eldric, Eldric to Kevin, Kevin to Perseu, Perseu to Astrid, Astrid to Rhoslyn. The light kept dropping. The torches I'd brought threw long shadows across the earth and across the marked backs of the six kneeling figures.
When the last needle came out of Sigurd's back, he convulsed.
He went down without warning, muscles contracting and releasing without rhythm, and the other five watched with different reactions. Kevin's smile gone. Perseu's hand moving toward Sigurd before stopping itself. Rhoslyn completely still. Astrid calculating with her cold eyes. Eldric already looking at me to see what I did.
I moved to the next one.
Kevin opened his mouth.
"Is this nor..."
"Normal," I said, without stopping. "If it hadn't stopped in five minutes it would've been a problem. It stopped in three."
Sigurd stopped convulsing. He lay on the ground breathing deep with his eyes closed, muscles spent, and there was an expression on his face I recognized. The one that comes when someone discovers their own body is different from what they thought.
I finished the last stroke on Rhoslyn's back.
The godswood went completely quiet. The six were marked, some still kneeling, others lying down, breathing the cold air of the godswood with the intensity of someone discovering their lungs work differently than they did an hour ago.
"One week of recovery," I said. "Then it begins."
I believe in two kinds of pain. The kind that hurts. And the kind that transforms.
In the months ahead, they were going to know both.