The swallows still gathered beneath the Old Watch gate when Jon rode down to the river fields. Beyond the wall, men were pitching the last oat sheaves onto a cart. Arthur pulled his horse aside to let it pass. A loose stalk caught in his boot buckle and went with him down the slope.
Miller's Run entered the holding through a stand of alder, crossed below the tower and fell between the rocks where Jon meant to put his wheel. Farther down, it curved east and left the leased ground. On the western bank, old field walls disappeared beneath briar. Two empty crofts faced a byre whose thatch had sunk between the rafters.
Jon dismounted beside the nearer croft. Through its open door he could see nettles growing around the hearth. A row of empty nests clung beneath the lintel.
"Woods says the walls will bear another roof," he told Arthur. "The byre needs new timbers. I shall have them here before the next families come."
Arthur looked beyond him at the rushes. "You have men enough asking for the spear."
"I need ploughmen as well. Men who can tell me what this soil will grow." Jon put his reins over his arm and led Bucephalus down the bank. "I can try a new plough in these fields and still reach the clock benches before dinner. Dragonstone has different soil. It will need its own crops and its own drains. I would rather arrive with men who have already built something with me."
Bucephalus lowered his head towards a thistle. Jon drew him clear.
"These families will stay," he added. "Father has agreed that their holdings pass back to Winterfell with the tower. The rent stays as we agree it now."
Arthur took the stallion's reins while Jon went farther down on foot. The ground sucked at his heels. He hitched his plain black coat above the mud and tucked its skirts through his belt. By the water, he crouched and pulled a mat of grass from the mouth of an old ditch. Beneath it lay black mud and a broken stone lip.
He followed the old channel until it vanished beneath a tumble of field stone. Beyond it, the higher ground was dry enough to crumble between his fingers. Someone had worked this land before the cottages emptied. The ridges were still there under the grass, and along the far wall an apple tree held a few small, hard fruits.
Jon looked back towards the tower. From the high window he would be able to see these fields and the road to the works. He had spent years in another life driving out before dawn to find a pump, a fence or a gate that needed attention. Here he could ride the whole holding before breakfast.
He brought a lump of the upper soil back to Arthur. "Have Perkin send for the families as soon as their harvest is in. Woods can begin the roofs while we clear the water."
Arthur gave him the reins. The lump broke apart as Jon slipped his glove on, scattering crumbs over his black sleeve.
* * *
At the next market Jon had the bellman call for farmers. This time he stayed beside the well while the man read, with Perkin seated beneath the adjoining awning.
"Land at Miller's Run for families willing to settle it. Shelter on arrival, with cottages to be repaired for the settlers. Seed and the first provisions supplied. No rent before the first crop is brought in. Those accepted will keep the husbandry Lord Black sets upon the holding."
The crowd was smaller than the one which had heard the call for spears. Men listened beside wives with market baskets. A few had brought children. There was less laughter and more asking the bellman to repeat himself.
A grey-haired man asked what would happen when Jon went south. Told that the holding remained under Winterfell, he listened to Perkin's rent terms, then stepped aside to consult his wife. The next wanted to know whether he must bring his own oxen.
"Not to be considered," Jon said. "Tell Perkin what you have, and the work you know."
By noon they had names from several lordships. A woman with two boys received directions for her husband to meet Jon after finishing his present lord's harvest. One family withdrew at the amount of draining; another went with the woodward to see the croft before deciding.
A week later six households gathered below the Old Watch, where canvas shelters stood ready upon the dry ground beside the byre. They had brought tools and bedding in handcarts and upon pack ponies; one man carried a cradle with his spade tied across it. Jon rode down to meet them, passing the new barracks where Hewyn's men were putting their shields away. Beside the river a woman had spread a cloth upon the grass for her youngest children. The others waited with their caps in their hands while Perkin read the names.
Gerren, who had driven the first cart, bowed with his cap against his belly. He had worked his elder brother's land near Cerwyn until the brother's sons were old enough to do without him.
"Your lordship means to let us the fields beyond the byre?"
"The sound ground. The wet bottom stays meadow until we can drain what is worth draining." Jon stepped over a fallen doorpost. "Come and look."
Gerren followed him inside. His wife remained by the cart, watching Woods's men lift a new ridge beam onto trestles.
"There is no rent before your first crop," Jon said. "Perkin will supply seed and food until then. You will owe labour on the common drains and keep the ground in the crops I set. Your own garden lies behind the house."
Gerren rubbed mortar between his fingers. "And when you go south, my lord?"
"You remain. Lord Stark has agreed it."
The man glanced through the doorway towards his wife. She had begun untying the loom.
Spearmen tightened the canvas shelters by the byre. Once roofed, the crofts would take two households; until more dwellings were ready, the settlers shared a fire beside their carts. Jon showed them the future doors and garden fences. One man measured a doorway with his shoulders; another asked to bring the fruit tree from his former home.
"If it can be moved without killing it," Jon said. "Ask Gerren to help you choose the place."
When they came back towards the crofts, Gerren's wife was waiting beside the door. Her name was Merra. She asked for a window beside the hearth, wide enough to work by.
Woods joined them from the byre. Jon looked at the sun and moved round the corner to see the slope. "Put the loom against this wall. You will get light from the east. Woods, give her a shutter here."
She curtseyed and went back to the cart. When Jon passed again on his way to the ditch, she had taken the boy from between the turnip sacks and wrapped him in a blanket upon the ground. Her husband was holding up two pieces of the dismantled loom while she told him which belonged together. Farther along, a hen escaped its wicker crate and the children went after it, checked at once by a sharp word from their mother when their chase reached Jon's horse.
Jon took them down to the ditch that afternoon. Ten spearmen had come with spades after their morning drill; the settlers brought mattocks and baskets for spoil. At the lower end, Jon stepped onto the gravel and set his spade against the broken lip. He loosened the stone while Symon lifted it clear.
Water seeped into the space. Jon scraped the bed open until it ran, brown at first, then clear enough to show pebbles.
"Keep the bottom falling towards this," he told Gerren. "We work back from here. Leave the sides sloped or the first rain will bring them down."
He cut a length himself, lifting each sod onto the bank with both hands. Behind him, the digging spread uphill. Symon showed one of the new men how to lever a root instead of wearing himself out chopping it. By dusk, water from the lowest hollow was moving between the fresh sides. The farther ground was still too wet to bear a cart.
Jon returned each morning before riding to the Black Yard. He took a spade when he came, checked the channel after rain and worked beside the men where roots or stones slowed them. Upstream he found a reach high enough to feed the gardens. He carried his level between the run and the crofts, with Gerren's elder son holding the far end of the line. The channel would have to go round the shoulder of the hill. A straight cut would fall too quickly and leave the gardens above it.
Gerren stopped beside the first bend. "That brings us farther from the houses, my lord."
"For a little way." Jon took him along the hillside to where it flattened. "Here we turn back. Keep it at this height and the water will reach the upper garden. Cut down there and your wife will still be carrying buckets uphill."
The man looked back along the proposed course. He had cleared ditches since he could lift a spade; he had never laid one out to bring water round a hill. "Will it come so far with scarcely any fall?"
"Come tomorrow and see."
Woods fitted a wooden hatch at the mouth, well above the proposed wheel. When the first length was open, Jon lifted it and let Gerren's son watch the water enter. It crept over the dry bed, darkening the earth ahead of it. Merra followed beside it with her skirts gathered up. By the time it reached the croft, two more women had come from the shelters.
Jon knelt at the bend and scraped away a ridge left by a spade. The thin stream spread across his fingers, gathered again and ran on towards the garden.
"All the way from there," Merra said. She looked uphill, then at the buckets beside her door. "And we can let it in when we need it?"
"Once the sides are finished. Show her the hatch, Gerren." Jon stood, wiping his wet hand on his breeches. "You will both need to work it."
Gerren's elder son had run ahead to watch it arrive. His father called him back to help raise the low side. Merra stayed by the stream until Jon shut the hatch, watching the last of the water disappear into the thirsty ground.
"The bottom drain stays open," he told Gerren. "This one opens only when the plants need water. If the run falls low, close it."
The new roof timbers went up while they dug. Smoke returned to the crofts. More families came to look, and Woods began a second row on the dry rise. Jon found children collecting fallen twigs there one evening; they stood aside with their bundles and watched him pass.
* * *
William returned from Barrow Hall with mud on his boots and Lord Dustin's steward's receipt folded inside his coat. The clock had kept its hours through the trial. Lady Barbrey had made him show the steward twice how to silence the bell at night.
"She heard it from her chamber?" Jon asked.
"No, my lord. She said I was to make him do it with his eyes shut."
Woods laughed and went back to the case he was fitting. Perkin counted the balance William had brought, paid the last of the journey's charges and closed the Dustin account.
Osric's packet arrived that afternoon with an Oldtown merchant: Leyton's final six hundred dragons, acceptance of the Hightower clock and recommendations for nine prospective recruits. All four faces had agreed through the trial; the keeper had taken over the winding.
"Through Ronnel?" Arthur asked, reading the names.
"The first two," Jon said. "Osric spoke to the Seneschal while the clock was fitted and proved."
Henly, Otho, a healer, an armourer's son and three men who had kept accounts were among those recommended. Osric would bring them north when he had arranged the remaining passages.
Perkin counted eighteen hundred dragons paid for the Hightower; the two counting-house clocks were also settled. Iron, timber, bells and making had been entered before departure. He added the last fitting wages and carriage, keeping the recruits' passage separate at Jon's order.
"Close the clock accounts," Jon said. "Their passage belongs with the men I am hiring."
William opened Callum's report. A shaft had rubbed during the first fitting; Callum had corrected its seat before the trial began. Jon had William find it upon their copy of the drawing and explain the change.
"Would you have found it here?" Jon asked.
"Not on our frame. The wall would have held it differently." William put the two drawings together. "I would have to try it under its own weight after fitting."
"Remember that at the next hall."
Perkin put the Hightower account with the completed work. Highgarden and the Rock were next: the rose case ready, the lion still awaiting its movement. William had two plain clocks to finish before either left, and three more merchants had paid earnest.
"One at a time upon my bench," Jon said, giving him the lion drawing. "Fit the ordinary train. Leave the moving paws until we can do them together."
William pulled his stool nearer. Arthur took the recruits' recommendations beyond reach of the brass filings.
* * *
Ewan and Jon worked on the new plough between the clock orders.
Jon had carved the curve of the mouldboard in wood, paring away curls until the surface would lift and turn the earth without an abrupt bend. Ewan bent thin iron over it in sections. Jon held each cooled piece against the form while the smith worked the next. Twice he carried them back because the edges met in a ridge that would catch soil.
The cutting share was separate, so a worn blade could be changed without making the whole plough anew. Woods brought an ash beam and the handles; Jon helped him fit the ironwork, driving the smaller pins while Ewan seated the heavy ones.
Gerren came when they had it assembled. He took off his cap at the door and waited until Jon beckoned him to the bench. For a while he touched only the wood. Then he bent to examine the iron curve, following it from the share to its broad upper edge.
"There is a deal of iron in that, my lord."
"It must hold this shape. Bare wood would soon lose the curve I want." Jon took the wooden form from beneath the bench and set it beside the finished mouldboard.
Gerren turned the form over. "You cut this yourself?"
"Aye. The first had too sharp a turn. This lifts the soil more gently."
Ewan showed him where the separate share came free. At that Gerren set his cap down and crouched for a better look.
"Will your lordship have it drawn by horses?"
"Oxen. Garrick is buying trained pairs."
"The lower ground will take the pull from them."
"We shall begin above it." Jon showed him the fittings at the beam. "The pull can be shifted here. You know the teams. Work with me until we have it drawing straight."
Cold rain delayed them for weeks. A skin of ice formed overnight in the horse trough and broke beneath a bucket next morning. Jon kept the oxen on the firm road, where Symon walked the unfamiliar teams in their new yokes. The plough waited beneath the byre roof, its iron greased against rust.
When the weather softened and a handful of the upper soil crumbled instead of smearing across his palm, Jon brought it out. Ewan came to watch the ironwork under strain; Arthur waited with the horses at the headland.
He walked behind the handles with Gerren beside him. Symon led the oxen. Their shoulders moved under the yoke; the beam tightened, and the share entered the ground. Earth climbed the mouldboard and rolled over with its grass beneath it.
The first length took them along the old headland. Jon felt the pull through both arms and settled his weight behind the handles, guiding rather than forcing the share down. Small roots tore with a sound like cloth parting. Gerren kept pace beside him, watching the clean face of the furrow. At its end Jon stopped the team and had him help shift the hitch. On the return the sideways strain eased. The rhythm came back more readily than the strength. As a boy in his first life he had wanted farm work finished so he could get to his books; as an old man he had found reasons to walk the fields after supper. He understood that last habit best now.
"Keep it there," Jon said. "Let it turn the earth."
He gave Gerren the handles and walked beside him while they made the next length. The man had spent more of his life behind oxen than Jon had spent in this body. He soon found the feel of it, eased one handle and laid the next slice of earth beside the first. His sons followed with a basket for stones. At the far end he stopped, planted the handles and looked back down the furrow.
"That has buried the grass, my lord."
"Aye. We shall harrow it before sowing."
Gerren bent over the turned sod and broke its edge with his thumb. "I used to send the boys through after me with mattocks." He beckoned his elder son to look. The lad knelt, pulled at a tuft buried beneath the furrow, then looked along the whole length they had just turned.
"Fetch your mother," Gerren told him.
By the time they reached the far end again, Merra was waiting with her knitting caught beneath one arm. Gerren made her walk the furrow. He had begun explaining before he remembered Jon was beside him, and stopped with a muttered apology.
"Show her," Jon said. "You know what work it has saved."
Another farmer came from the byre and asked to try. Gerren walked beside him while Jon watched the join between the plates. The soil shed cleanly.
"I could use another team now," the farmer said when he halted. "If your lordship will have another of these made."
"When Ewan has finished this one. The hitch needs an easier fastening. Bring your eldest to the next trial."
The man lingered beside the mouldboard until Gerren called him to help move the team. Behind them Merra was asking how much more ground they could manage.
By noon dark furrows crossed the field and the stone basket had been filled twice. Merra brought bread; Wylla arrived with onions and barley. Arthur cut the loaf while Jon washed, then they sat together upon the cart bed. Merra broke her youngest boy's bread into his broth.
"The loom is yours?" Jon asked.
"My mother's before me." She glanced towards the byre. "I have been weaving through the wet days. If your women have need of plain cloth."
"Bring Mairi, my seamstress, a piece when you have one ready. There are shirts to make as well as coats."
Merra looked at Gerren, who was eating too quickly to answer at once. He swallowed and nodded. The older boy asked whether the soldiers' black cloth came from black sheep, and Wylla told him that the best of it did. She had spent enough mornings separating shades to have an opinion on the matter. Gerren reached for another piece of bread while they talked. Beyond the cart, one of the oxen lay down, folding its great forelegs beneath it with a sigh.
After the meal, Jon walked the fields with the ploughman. Beyond the newly turned earth lay another long strip, the rough ground beside the byre and a sheltered enclosure against the western wall.
"Four fields," Jon said. "Barley, clover, rye and turnips. When a field is ready for its next crop, we move it on. The clover stays for cutting and grazing before we turn it under for rye. It feeds the beasts and leaves the soil better for grain. The turnips help us keep them through the cold, and their dung comes back here."
"We keep a turnip patch, my lord. My wife tends it."
"Then I shall want her help. I mean to grow enough for the byre as well as the pot."
Gerren looked back at the oxen. "There is work in that much hoeing." He hesitated. "And which field rests, my lord?"
"The clover takes the place of bare fallow."
"But it is growing a crop."
"A different one. Grain after grain takes the goodness out; clover helps put it back." He had learned the cycle through cattle, fodder and dung in his first life, long before he learned what happened beneath a root.
Gerren rubbed his beard. "We let the cows onto the fallow. My father did the same. I have never heard of a man sowing it for them."
"You will see the difference in the byre before you see it in the next grain crop."
The ploughman looked across the four strips again. Beside the byre, his wife had begun gathering the bowls. "She wanted another cow. We had no hay to spare."
"Let us bring in the first cutting before you buy her one."
"Aye, my lord." Gerren's eyes moved to the clover ground. "Will your lordship have us keep the grass cut apart, then, so we know how much?"
"That is what I want."
"I will pay for the extra hands. We shall begin with these four strips and keep seed from what grows best." Jon knelt and broke a clod along the furrow. "The lower meadow stays in grass. We have enough to bring under the plough."
Merra joined them to reckon the seed and hands needed for the root strip. She would use the spacing from her garden, with paths left for the hoers. When Jon asked about storing the sound roots dry and covered, she showed him an old pit beyond the wall. It stood above the ditch, half filled with rubbish; he had it cleared and left open to dry.
They would cut the roots for the cattle and return the rotted bedding to the fields. Gerren repeated the next morning's work to his sons before Jon left. Their names meant nothing to Ethan yet. In four years Jon meant to have men on Dragonstone who could teach this work as plainly.
A little seed from every sack had first gone onto damp linen to test whether it still sprouted. Over the following days they sowed barley, rye upon the lighter ground and clover beyond it. Jon and Merra laid out the root drills. Behind the byre, the lads mixed spent bedding and dung with leaves and spoiled fodder, keeping fresh stable muck apart and clear of the stream.
When the seedlings were large enough to thin, Jon and Merra returned to the drills.
Gerren's youngest daughter found Jon at the root ground with the dinner Wylla had sent. He ate upon the boundary wall while the harrow crossed the brown earth. Across the run, Woods's men were lifting another beam beneath the broken tower.
* * *
Gawen had Jon's arming coat waiting when he came back from the fields. While Jon washed the soil from his hands, the knight made Aries lay out everything which went over it.
The boy found the mail collar, the belt and the gloves. He put the helm with its open side upwards, where loose grit could fall inside it. Gawen turned it over without scolding and had him feel the lining.
"Clean cloth beneath it. You would notice a stone after someone had fastened that on your head."
"I'd take it off."
"Lord Jon may have both hands occupied."
Aries spread the cloth. Jon came in with Arthur, still drying his hands, and stood while the page brought his coat. Gawen helped settle the heavier pieces, then showed the boy which fastenings could be reached without lifting anything beyond his strength.
Aries hauled the first strap tight enough to pucker the coat. Jon caught his hand.
"I shall want to breathe."
The boy let go at once. Gawen loosened the fastening and showed how much room to leave, then made Aries set it again. One strap twisted against the collar. He had to undo the buckle and begin from the other side.
"Now ask him to move," Gawen said.
"Move, my lord."
Jon raised his arms, turned and bent to take up his shield. The collar held without drawing across his throat. Aries ran a finger beneath the edge as he had been shown, pleased to find the same space still there.
"Better," Jon said. "Leave the sword belt for Gawen until you can manage it without dragging the scabbard on the floor."
The boy's pleased look vanished. "I can lift it."
"Lifting it is not the only part."
After the practice Gawen made him return each piece dry to its place. Aries discovered how much work remained after his lord had taken the armour off. He tried to leave a buckle beneath the cloth. Jon found it when he came for his gloves and called him back.
Wylla sat nearby mending the elbow of the little black coat. She watched Aries take the buckle without argument, and set it down again only after he had cleaned the dirt from beneath its tongue. When she called him to try the mended sleeve, he came with his hands held out to show they were clean.
While Gawen took the horses out, Jon cleared the little table and laid down a worn copy of the northern road map. Aries came back from Wylla with his mended sleeve rolled up to admire the stitching.
"Here," Jon said, setting a fingertip beside Winterfell. "Find where we are."
Aries bent over the ink. "Where's the pig pens?"
"Too small to show."
"They're bigger than that." He pointed to the little square which stood for the castle.
"The square tells you where Winterfell is. It does not show the size of the walls." Jon traced the kingsroad south with his finger. "This takes you out of the town. Follow it with me."
At the turning towards White Harbor, Aries tried to take the straighter road. Jon brought his finger back and let him choose again. Arthur drew up a stool while they followed the branch towards the sea.
"Our factor Osric went that way with the clocks," Jon said. "At White Harbor he took ship. When you carry a message, you ask which road. When you send a man as far as Oldtown, you must ask about ships as well."
"Why not ride all the way?"
"You could. It would take longer, and the clocks would have to bear every rut. Find the sea."
Aries touched the blank space east of the coast. He knew the word now, though he had never seen more water than the river in flood. "Dragonstone's in there?"
"Farther south than this sheet shows." Jon fetched the smaller coast chart from his letter case and set White Harbor beside White Harbor. "Here is Gulltown. Farther down, my island."
Arthur held the curled corner flat while Aries followed the coast between them. The boy had begun to recognise some of the letters; he picked out the first of his own name in White Harbor and lost interest in the others.
"If it's yours, why do you live here?"
"I am preparing the men and the work we shall take there. My castellan Ethan keeps it for me until I come."
"Is White Harbor yours too?"
"No. Lord Manderly holds it."
"But our clocks go there."
"And pay to use his harbour. Having goods in a wagon does not give me the road beneath its wheels." Jon tapped the square for Winterfell again. "Even here I have neighbours. Their cattle cross the lower lane. I cannot stop them because my wagons would rather use it."
Aries frowned at the sea chart. "What if you send soldiers?"
"Then I have sent armed men to break an agreement I made before Lord Stark. He would have something to say about it."
"So would the neighbours," Arthur said. "And the next man Lord Jon asked to make an agreement with him."
The boy looked from one sheet to the other. He put a finger on White Harbor, then drew it carefully through the blank sea towards Dragonstone.
"That way?"
"By ship," Jon said. "Yes."
Jon gave him a scrap and the charcoal to draw the journey. Aries made a boat with a horse almost as large as its hull. Jon put away the charts while the drawing acquired a second horse and a strip of dry land for them to reach.
* * *
The cyvasse set from White Harbor reached the Black Yard with a merchant's next parcel of brass. Its box had plain iron hinges and smelled faintly of the cinnamon packed beside it. Jon unwrapped the pieces, checked them against the book and took the whole thing up to Winterfell that afternoon.
Luwin cleared his little table beneath the rookery window. He named the pieces, showed Jon how to set his ground and raised the screen between them. Above their heads a raven knocked its beak against a cage bar. The maester went up to settle it while Jon arranged his army, then returned and lifted the screen.
Jon lost a horse before he had quite understood what Luwin was preparing. He asked to have the move shown again. Luwin smiled and leaned over the board to show him, then put the pieces back where they had been and allowed Jon to continue from his mistake.
Robb found them there with the game well advanced. He pulled a stool beside Jon and watched Luwin move an elephant.
"Has he taken one of yours?"
"My horse," Jon said as Luwin removed it.
Robb bent nearer. "You could take—"
"Let me finish this one."
Jon brought his dragon forward. Luwin considered it for a while before answering, and Jon began to think he had recovered enough to trouble him. Then he saw the approach he had left open beside his own king. Three moves later the maester took it.
"Again," Jon said.
"After Robb has had his turn." Luwin set the captured king upright and showed Jon where the trouble had begun. Robb was already drawing the box towards him.
Jon gave up the stool. He stayed to hear the maester explain the pieces again, watching Robb choose his ground far more cautiously than he had chosen his. When a servant came to fetch them for supper, Robb made her wait while Luwin showed him why a move he wanted would lose his horse.
Arthur waited outside the rookery. He nodded towards the game box. "Skorion massitas?"
"Qringōntan." Jon passed him the box.
"Against Luwin? You are in good company."
They carried the set down together. Robb wanted to borrow it the next evening. Jon agreed, provided he brought every piece back.
Jon had enjoyed himself, even in defeat. He wanted another game against Luwin now that he understood the pieces, but he also wanted to put Robb across a board whose rules he knew. He had played chess for most of his former life; the prospect of teaching his brother brought back his appetite for it. That night he drew an eight-by-eight board and set down the shapes of all thirty-two pieces.
Woods found a strip of dry birch among the offcuts. The men could be cut from it, he said, but no one was to expect fine horses' heads from a carpenter who had roofs to finish. Jon asked only that the pieces could be told apart. He inked the board himself while the glue dried beneath its frame.
Robb came upon him a few evenings later with the pale men arranged before an empty chair. He set down the mittens he had brought from Winterfell and examined a knight.
"Where are the elephants?"
"There are none. This is a different game." Jon moved the chair out with his foot. "Sit. You can have the pale side."
"What is it called?"
"Chess."
Robb settled opposite him. Jon showed him the towers first, then the septons and their slanting paths. The knight took longer. Robb lifted it over a pawn, put it down upon the wrong square and frowned when Jon moved it one farther across.
"It can jump over its own men?"
"And yours. But only to a square it can reach by that move."
"Show me again."
Jon did. He left castling until Robb could move the rest without asking and let him take back the first queen he offered. The second stayed beside Jon's cup. Robb stared at the gap in his line, then began making room for a tower.
Arthur stopped behind his chair. "Your king."
"I can see him." Robb bent lower. "Jon, wait."
Jon waited. Robb's frown over the board was giving him almost as much pleasure as the game. When the meal bell sounded, Robb asked whether they might eat there. Jon sent for bread and cheese, and Arthur took the spare stool.
Hewyn came in as they were finishing and returned the following evening to try it. Jon had a second board made for the officers' room. He wrote out the moves in a few plain lines and left the sheet with it, but for the first week men were forever coming to ask about a pawn at the far edge or a king that had nowhere to go. He went back with them when he could. Before long he was finding his chair occupied and two more men waiting to challenge the winner.
Robb borrowed the first set for an evening at Winterfell. When Jon arrived for supper, he found it in the family room, with Sansa in Robb's chair and Theon opposite her. Jeyne had drawn a stool close to Sansa. Robb stood behind them, trying to explain a move neither had asked him about.
"That tower cannot go through your own man," he said.
"I was moving him out of the way." Sansa set down the pawn she held. "You said I could move him two places at the beginning."
"You can," Jon said from the doorway. Sansa looked round at once, and Robb made room for him.
Theon turned one of the dark pieces upon its base. "Who taught you this? Luwin says it is not in his book."
"Jon made it," Robb said. "The board and all the moves." There was pride in the way he said it. Jon took the chair beside the hearth, close enough to see the game without standing over Sansa.
Theon put the piece back and looked up at Robb. "And you know them all?"
"Enough to beat you," Robb said.
"After me." Sansa waited until Theon looked at the board again before moving her pawn. Jeyne whispered something to her, then pressed her lips together when Robb leaned nearer.
Arya came to Jon with a captured knight in each hand. He made a place for her beside him and showed her the carved heads. She preferred the dark one; its nose had come out longer. Across the room Robb caught himself reaching over Sansa's shoulder and drew his hand back. A few moves later she took Theon's tower.