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Her brother Domeric said, “Well, you’re as fair as any Manderly or Cerwyn, and you are descended from kings. Young Aegon, they say, cares naught for women nor for anything else, but surely he must have more pride than to submit meekly to that grasping Lord Peake. He must marry someone, so why could it not be you?"

And so he conferred with his Manderly wife, and his Manderly wife bargained with her lord brother, and in the end when Lord Manderly sent his daughters south, Lady Barba Bolton accompanied them.

Barba herself did not possess the confidence that her brother had in her. Oh, she knew she was fair enough, with dark hair and Bolton blue eyes, tall for her sixteen years. Years of riding and hunting had made her strong and supple and healthy as a pine tree. Her Dustin mother had birthed three sons and a daughter for House Bolton, so she knew could give King Aegon plenty of children too.

And she would be presented at the Maiden’s Day Ball in a gown of pink and white and a cloak of red fox fur, with a heavy silver collar round her throat and her hair braided and looped and pinned atop her head with ornate silver combs. When she peered into her mirror that morning, Barba had never looked so fine in all her life.

But King Aegon did not care about the illustrious history of House Bolton, or that they had been the Red Kings of the Dreadfort in the Age of Heroes, or that today they were the greatest house in the North after the Wardens of Winterfell. He did not care if Barba was sweet or pretty or dutiful. It was said he cared for nothing at all but occasionally the company of his cupbearer, Gaemon Palehair; when asked who would inherit the Iron Throne after him, he had even put the lowborn bastard's name forward as his choice.

Still, whether he was a madman or a melancholic, Barba knew her duty, and she would do her best.

Even she did not expect how fast it would all be over, though. She was an excellent dancer and thought she might have caught his attention that way, but the so-called Maiden's Day Ball was more like a livestock auction than anything else. By the time she was presented before the king, she knew that King Aegon might as well pick Myrielle Peake, for all he cared. There was no reason at all for Barba to have bothered attending.

So she decided to use this time, likely the only time she would speak to the King of the Seven Kingdoms face to face, to try and make a request of him. 

"If you send me home, Your Grace," she said, "send me home with food, for the snows are deep and your people are starving."

King Aegon looked at her for a moment, more to be polite than anything she was sure, but he did nod a little. Barba would have to be pleased with that.

Afterward, without her nerves to keep her on her toes, Barba had difficulty staying alert. She stood in the eaves of the hall with Mara and Lynara Manderly, whose curtsies to the king were also over with, and tried to keep from yawning as the sisters hissed furiously back and forth to each other.

"Can you believe that one was bold enough to ask for a kiss?" said Mara. "Fell in love with him from afar indeed!"

"That one's hardly wearing any clothes! Is that how they really dress in the Free Cities?"

"And him just thirteen! For shame!"

Barba liked the Manderly sisters, who were loud and lively but did not mind that she mostly preferred to listen rather than talk. They looked so fresh and pretty today, with their long fair hair and their sea-foam green dresses. And with the number of ships always sailing in and out of White Harbor, they were familiar with gossip about many minor houses in the south, and were happy to fill her in on it. 

"Those are Lord Baratheon's daughters," Lynara would say. "Little harpies, I hear, all of them - and why they would think the king would want to wed any of them when their father flung Lucerys Velaryon out of Storm's End to his death, I don't know."

"There's Sansara Tarly. Did you know that her sister Lady Sam - yes, Samantha Tarly who wed Lord Hightower and is his son's leman - they say she wrote personally to King Aegon, telling him that he should wed her because she's as learned as any maester. She's not so much to look at though, is she?"

"Oh, and poor Rosamund Darry - you know, I was not certain she'd even show her face. Someone's been spreading the stupidest rumors about her - that her mother lay with a dog and so she's got six nipples - who would believe such a stupid thing?"

Barba was moved by the indignity of this last to declare, "King's Landing is a cesspit. If these are the kinds of people that King Aegon must live with, it's no wonder he's no faith in anyone but his cupbearer."

She had probably spoken a little louder than she should have, for a cluster of men standing close by - Reach-lords, she thought - glanced over at her.

Barba simply lifted her chin and stared them down. She had not said anything she wasn't willing to stand by. One of them kept watching her even after the others turned away, so she gave him a terse nod and decided to ignore him.

Lynara was laughing. "Dear Barba, you are so stern! I will tell my father to make sure to introduce you to some of the more pleasant people he knows here, else you go bearing only sorry tales back to the Dreadfort."

Despite herself, Barba smiled a little. "I am certain anyone Lord Manderly calls a friend is quite genial. I would be happy to meet them."

Toward the end of the day, though, even the Manderly sisters started to flag. They leaned against the stone column with Barba, fanning their faces and only occasionally remarking on the parade of maidens going by. "That Weatherwax girl's from the Vale... why, she's only a baby..." 

"Those are all Florent cousins, I think Lady Sam recommended them to the king in her letter too... That red-haired one's even rather pretty..."

"Who ever even heard of House Sunglass? Where is that... Oh yes, by Driftmark, that would be it..."

Barba resisted fanning her face, but only barely. The crush in the room had only increased as the day went on, and the heat too, until she had seen several swooning lords and ladies have to be taken out of the hall. The group of Reach-lords were now pressed up so close beside them that Barba had to gather up her fox fur cloak close to her to keep it from getting caught under foot. One of the lords, clad in blue velvet, swept up a few folds and laid them over her arm, and she thanked him and turned away.

Indeed, by the time that the king's sisters rode into the hall to present pretty little Daenaera Velaryon, the heat had grown so oppressive and the hall so crowded that Barba hardly cared.

A six year old girl would be Aegon's queen. Why not? She was a cousin of his in some manner, and his sisters, who everyone agreed did truly love him, had recommended her, so they must have thought they’d suit. And he would be able to put off the business of actually being a married man for about another decade, at which point he might have regained some of his spirit and gaiety, if he’d ever had any. 

She applauded dutifully along with all the rejected maidens, and drifted off to the chambers which she shared with the Manderly girls. Her maid stripped off her finery and scrubbed with a wet cloth at Barba's face and all the places she had sweated through her dress. Then she put her in a nightshift and tucked her into bed beside Mara, where Barba fell immediately off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

—

They all slept in late the next morning, and when they woke, Barba saw that a servant had set out a light repast, which suited her. 

It was not that it was really hot in the south. When winter came, it came everywhere, after all. But it was certainly hotter than it had been lately at home, and the food was much richer and sweeter than she was used to. As she sat down to eat, she had the same thought that she always had. It was unfair to her to be here in King's Landing, eating like this, while back home the poor harvest meant her brothers ate lean game and rough bread, and some of the smallfolk had nothing left to eat at all.

"You are familiar with King Aegon's character," she said abruptly to Lord Manderly. "Will he really send me home with food?

Lord Manderly looked away from Mara, who had been regaling him with some story she'd heard about Princess Baela, to reply to Barba. He had been one of the king's regents for a few years, before he had been recalled to White Castle by his father's and brother's deaths the previous year. It was from him that Barba had heard that King Aegon was a sad, solemn boy, but he hadn't said very much else. 

After a moment's thought, he said, carefully, "I imagine that King Aegon would like to provide relief to the North. But it may not be in his power to do so, not least because times are lean in the south as well."

In plain terms - her plea had been completely for naught. 

It frustrated her. The people of the north were as leal to the Iron Throne as those of the south. It had been her great-uncle Roderick Dustin who had led his army of old men south to die for the dragon queen, and later on Cregan Stark's army too had suffered heavy losses fighting the greens in the Riverlands. They had proved true to Rhaenyra and her sons where so many southron lords had not, but it was these same southroners now who would keep the king from providing any aid to the north.

If Lord Stark had not resigned as the Hand of the King -

But that was not Lord Manderly's fault. She smiled and thanked him for his explanation, and went back to picking at her meal. 

The Manderlys were discussing the rest of their stay in Kings Landing. Lord Manderly had not been sure how long the business of the Maiden's Day Ball would truly take, so he had not chartered their passage home for another moon. He would need to stay a little while anyway, he had some business with the king's council, but he could easily send the girls home on another ship this week.

"No, Father, we want to stay!" pleaded Mara. "When will we come south again? Poor Barba especially - she's never been further that Barrowton before! Please let us stay with you?"

Lynara added her voice to her sister's, and, more effective, her big pleading green eyes. 

Lord Manderly looked at Barba, who after a moment's thought nodded her assent. She was not particularly enamored of Kings Landing, but she did not mind staying a little longer to please the sisters. At the very least, she would come home with some decent stories to tell her family as they whiled away the long winter nights. And she could buy some cunning little toys for her nephews like those she'd seen the children of the Red Keep playing with.

But after another week at the Red Keep, she was beginning to second-guess herself.

Oh, it was diverting enough the day she'd attended the markets which crowded the narrow streets all around the Red Keep. She bought not only the toys for her nephews but a length of lovely red velvet ribbon all embroidered with tiny white birds for herself, though she managed to resist the bangles of red glass which some trader from Myr had worked very hard to push upon her. She'd eaten what must have been a bushel-load of meat pies.

And, thrillingly, some young Riverlands knight had tried flirting with her, though the laughing Manderly sisters had managed to chase him away when Barba turned too tongue-tied to scold him for his temerity herself.

Lord Manderly had actually introduced her to some genial southron nobles, mostly of the Riverlands and the Vale, when they all attended dinners together in the great hall or in Lord Manderly's quarters. Indeed Lord Sunderland's heir seemed so taken with Mara that she and Lynara expected they would be soon losing her to a wedding in the Vale.

"Well," said Lynara after that particular meal, "at least she'll still be living by the sea. And Lord Steffon's handsome enough."

“He seems to be a sober and honorable man," added Barba.

Lynara laughed. "That is what you'd notice, isn't it?" Then, sobering a little herself, she added, "But I think he will be good to her too, don't you think? And if he is not, I shall hunt him down with my trident, and you, Barba, shall make from his skin a nice cloak."

"Lynara!" she gasped, astonished. But in her heart, she did agree. The Boltons no longer flayed men, but she'd skinned enough rabbits and foxes and stags that she figured she could do it if the need ever came.

Still, with Mara spending so much time with Lord Steffon, and Lynara serving as their glowering chaperone, Barba was starting to be left more often to her own devices. And she was growing bored. Day by day the Red Keep was emptying as rejected maidens and their families headed home, and those who remained were here to scheme and intrigue. Barba knew nothing and cared less about southron politics.

She wrote letters to her family and her friends back home, but you could not send ravens too often in winter. She worked a little on a pair of embroidered coin purses she meant to present to the Manderly sisters, but it was easy work and besides, she felt oddly lonely doing the same as she might have done at home when she was all the way in Kings Landing. And she was shy enough to not have made any new friends who might invite her to pass the time with them.

So she decided to take her maid and go visit the godswood.

It was not a true godswood, of course. There was no weirwood tree at its heart, but only a broad old oak, so when she knelt in the snow there was no familiar pungent scent of red sap to focus her. She stayed there a while and tried to pray, but her thoughts darted here and there and refused to settle. How were her nephews doing? Was her brother disappointed that she had not been chosen as Aegon's queen? Her brother Myles’s wife had been with child when Barba left to White Castle - how was she faring?

How many more had died starving in the deep snows while she dallied here? 

It had been bad, that last stretch of autumn before winter bit through the Bolton lands. The incessant rain had rotted the grain in the field, and when the Weeping Water have swelled over its banks, it had washed away half of a village and a number of storehouses, some belonging to their vassal lords and some to her brother himself, which had been stocked full of smoked meats and barrels of flour and pickled vegetables which should have seen them through the winter.

Now the ground was so hard beneath the snow that it needed to be burnt before a grave could be dug, and when she rode through the town below the Dreadfort’s walls, gaunt children clung to her cloak and begged for crusts.

She felt her lips quivering, and had to press them together tight to keep from weeping. Weeping! For what? No matter that her family was in the north and she in the south. Surely she could do something for them from here, if only she thought hard enough.

When Barba rose, knees stiff and hands sore with the cold, she looked round and saw that she was no longer alone. 

There was a man standing under the shadow of a nearby tree, with his arms crossed and a little smirk playing about his mouth. He had brown hair and wore a blue cloak, and though he looked vaguely familiar, she didn't know where she knew him from.

He was very clearly not of the north, though - he was dressed too warmly for that. And somehow she did not think he had come to pray. She had heard that some folks at the Red Keep thought of the godswood as more of a garden than a place of worship, so perhaps he was here for a walk, though why he'd want to in this kind of weather she did not know.

To be polite, she inclined her head a little and smiled. Then she turned toward her maid and started to tell her that they ought to go back up to her rooms.

No time for that, as it turned out. As though her smile had been an invitation, the man walked right up to her and said, "You are Lady Barba Bolton."

This was true, so Barba agreed. "But I do not know your name, ser."

"I am Ser Ryam Florent," he informed her. "Heir to Brightwater Keep. My uncle is Lord Florent."

Florent, Florent… Barba thought hard. A Reach house, yes. She thought she remembered Lord Manderly mentioned Lord Florent once or twice. Their sigil was...

When she remembered, her hand rose instinctively to stroke her fox-fur cloak, and she felt a bit embarrassed. Their sigil was a red fox within a ring of white flowers. 

Ser Ryam seemed to have the same thought. "I saw you at the Maiden's Day Ball in that same cloak. I know your sigil is the flayed man, and mine, of course, is the cunning fox. Were you sending me a message, I wonder?"

Barba exchanged a look with her maid Lyra. Had he been offended? Was he trying to start some kind of argument?

Well, if he was, then Barba certainly was not going to humor him. "It is cold in the winter, Ser Ryam. Fox fur is very warm and soft. And I shot each of the beasts whose pelts were used in my cloak, so it is my favorite one."

I shall shoot you full of holes too, she thought, if you do not state your business and leave me alone.

But Ser Ryam only tipped his head back and laughed at that. He had a rather quiet laugh, like a huffed breath, and it discomfited Barba because she realized that he had only been seeking to make conversation.

"So you are a great huntress, then. I will admit it is not the sport of my choice, but it is certainly a useful one."

"Yes," she replied, cautious. "That is why I enjoy it."

"And what kind of beasts do you like to hunt?"

Perhaps he was curious about what kind of game there was in the north?

"All kinds, ser. I mostly hunt small game, rabbits and ptarmigans and the like, but I will go after deer and foxes on occasion. Once, when there was an old toothless wolf harassing our livestock, I went along to hunt for it with my brothers. It was my brother Royce that killed it, though, in the end. But it was my hounds that caught its scent in the first place!" 

Barba was competitive, and the loss still smarted, which was why she spoke freer than she should have. That, and because speaking of the hunt for that wily old wolf seemed to simultaneously make her realize that she was homesick, and in the same breath soothe it. But she caught herself now, and let the smile fall away from her lips and lowered her eyes to stare at the trampled snow at her feet. She was suddenly nervous.

“Do you like to dance?”

She looked up again, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

"Hmm,” was all Ser Ryam said. And then he bowed a little, nodded to her maid, and strolled away as quietly and easily as he had arrived. 

Barba looked after him, puzzled. "Do you think I need mention this to Lord Manderly?" she asked Lyra. After all, while she'd spoken to strange lords in the Red Keep before, none had come up to her in quite such a fashion.

"I am not sure, my lady," said Lyra. "Mayhaps he only wished to greet you?"

But why? Barba did not understand, and things she did not understand made her anxious. At the same time, though, this was trivial enough an incident that in the end she did not say anything about it to anyone.

—

She did wonder how he had known there would be dancing that night, though. In any other great keep there was always dancing with dinner in the great hall. But it was said King Aegon did not enjoy music, so there had been no dancing since Barba was at the Red Keep. It was when she saw little Daenaera Velaryon up at the high table beside the king, clapping in time with the music, that she understood.

The king’s sisters and their respective husbands were smiling at the pair. King Aegon was looking with some trepidation at the musicians, but Lady Daenaera tugged at his sleeve and pointed, and he gave a stiff little smile. Barba wondered if she reminded him of his younger brother Prince Viserys, whose had died during the Battle of the Gullet.

In that moment, the whole scene seemed almost farcical - the laughing lords and ladies overseen by a terribly sad young boy, the tables groaning under food which would mostly be distributed to the poor of the city the next morning, the swirling skirts of the dancers and the boom of the drums and the piping of the flutes and horns rising above it all. All these moving, living creatures with their own separate lives and concerns and allegiances, but stripped of their skin they would be all the same red of muscle and bone beneath.

“Finish your wine and come dance!” insisted Lynara. Barba shook the foolish thoughts from her head, quaffed the rest of her wine and obeyed.

These southron dances were slower and statelier than those danced in the north, but she had learned the steps in White Harbor and could dance them now as comfortably as though she’d danced them all her life. Mara was in the arms of her Sunderland lord all night, but Lynara and Barba changed partners often.

At first they danced mostly with each other and sometimes with Lord Manderly and a handful of his friends they had met at suppers before. But as the dancing went on longer, Barba found herself standing up with young men that she did not know, young men who were full of extravagant compliments about her eyes and her skin and wanted to know all about who she was.

Barba was used to everyone knowing precisely what House Bolton was, and who she was in relation to it, so at first it was a novel experience. But then she found that after the compliments and the remarks about how cold it must be up north, they never had anything more in particular to say. And when they nattered on about their own homes and family histories, she grew disdainful.

This man’s house was a mere knightly one established only three generations before; that one had had the majority of his house lands stripped from him for their actions during the Dance of the Dragons. None of them should have even been considered worthy of paying court to her, and yet they spoke so slyly about how much she must wish to leave the cold, harsh north and stay in the warm, soft south that she fair grew tired of listening to their voices. Between partners she wanted to shake out her skirts as though to shake all the stupid things they’d said from her head.

Her newly discovered homesickness was making her ill-tempered. It was an unusual treat to dance at the Red Keep these days, but Barba just wished it would be over already. She started toward Lord Manderly, who was circling the floor with the new Lady Tully, meaning to ask permission to go to bed early.

Then a plain-faced man in sumptuous green velvet stepped into her path. “Will you dance with me, lady?” he asked.

A refusal danced on the tip of her tongue, but then Barba recognized him. It was Ser Ryam Florent again. And the sight of him in velvet further jogged her memory.

He was one of the Reach-lords who’d stood by her on the day of the Maiden’s Day Ball, the one who’d helped her gather up the folds of her fox fur clock and keep it from being ruined in the crush. No wonder he remembered what she had worn that day.

She meant to refuse him now, for she really did want to return to the rooms she shared with the Manderly sisters and be alone. But she hardly had her mouth open before he smiled and said, “Thank you, Lady Barba -”

As though she’d even said anything!

And before she could protest he had taken her in his arms and was whirling her into the figures of the dance.

Barba did not recognize the song, but Ser Ryam seemed to know it and she tried to follow along with his steps as well as she could. “Ser,” she said, censorious, “I had meant to stop dancing for the night.”

“So your final dance shall be with me, then,” he said. She thought she saw the glint of satisfaction in his deep green eyes.

“It shall,” she agreed, resigning herself. It would only be a few more minutes anyhow.

And Ser Ryam at least did not say stupid things. He asked Barba about what she thought of the Red Keep, if she was enjoying her sojourn in the south, and if she would be returning to attend the royal wedding at the end of the year.

“So it’s to be the end of the year?” She was surprised that he knew, because despite everyone’s curiosity all arrangements relating to the wedding were of the utmost secrecy. There was not even enough information slipped out to fuel rumors. “You seem to know much about the goings on here at the Red Keep, ser. Did you know about tonight’s dancing, when you spoke to me in the godswood?”

"Of course I did. I know about everything.”

Barba was so astounded she lost track of her feet for a moment, legs splaying out awkwardly from beneath her. She managed to stay upright, but only by half falling against Ser Ryam.

She recovered her footing a moment later and swung back into the dance, determined not to blush. "How did you know?" she inquired, as coolly as though nothing at all had just happened. "Are you friendly with the king?" Even if it was hard to imagine anyone being friendly with King Aegon.

"I'm a Florent," replied Ser Ryam. "All of us Florents have big ears, and we hear everything."

Barba could not help but look. He really did have big ears which stuck out, but she was not a child to swallow silly explanations. She would ask Lord Manderly later if Ser Ryam was important in any way to the politics of the realm, to be so well-informed. "Is that what they say about House Florent?"

"That," he agreed, "and that we are wily as foxes. We are descended from Garth Greenhand's daughter Florys, who was cunning enough to balance three husbands and three keeps all at the same time without any of them figuring it out. House Ball is descended from her sons with the first husband, and House Peake from her sons with the second. But House Florent is descended from the sons she bore her third and youngest husband, and you must admit we are the cleverest of all for we are the ones who have held onto her name."

"So you and Lord Peake are cousins by way of Florys?"

Barba had not seen Lord Peake in court lately, which was concerning as he was King Aegon's Hand. People said he was humiliated by the failure of his scheme to set his daughter up as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. But since part of his promotion of Myrielle Peake included comparing bedding her to eating turnips, Barba was not surprised it hadn't worked. She had heard plenty about House Peake's three castles, but nothing of their cunning.

Ser Ryam caught the amusement in her eyes and winced a little. "Distantly, yes. Very, very distantly. But I have never spoken to the man."

Barba mentally crossed the explanation of a connection to Lord Peake off the list. She was glad to do so. She expected that Lord Peake's fortunes in the king's courts were on the wane - and besides, she did not like what she had heard of him.

"Tell me about Brightwater Keep," she said instead. "Do you live upon a river?"

The song was nearly over, so Ser Ryam spoke but briefly. Yet he was so good a talker that every word seemed to conjure up bright images in her mind - the tall tower looking out east upon fields of rippling gold and green, the Honeywine running fat and slow through pastures dotted with lowing cows and woolly sheep, and the yellow arrow of the Roseroad going north toward Highgarden and south toward Oldtown. There were always bees buzzing in the clover, because they were not very far from Honeyholt, and many of the smallfolk around those parts were permitted to keep beehives.

"But now it is all under a sheet of ice and snow," he concluded. "And tucked away sleeping until summer."

Barba thought of one of the old stories her nursemaid used to tell her, which she'd always claimed came from beyond the Wall. When winter came to Westeros, she claimed, it was actually an old woman washing her sheets and making her bed. The white snow drifts were fresh linens, the whistling wind the hiss of the laundry kettle, and it was when she beat the white feathers from her pillows that snowflakes flurried down from the sky. Barba had always thought that the old woman must not make her bed up very often, considering how many years winter took in coming sometimes.

She smiled to herself, and Ser Ryam leaned in a little and remarked, "You must not enjoy dancing after all, my lady, if you smile at the end of a song."

"Oh, not at all!" she exclaimed, surprised. "Southron dances are quite different from those we have in the north, but I enjoy them all the same. No, ser, I was only thinking that it's been a long evening. I suppose I have become used to things being quiet."

He was guiding her through the throng of dancers that milled about the floor, waiting for the musicians to strike up the next song. There were so many people that Barba expected constantly to stumble into someone, but Ser Ryam kept her close and steered her well, and soon enough they were on the edge of the floor. She thought he would leave her there, but he went on walking toward the tables.

"Quiet? At the Red Keep?"

His incredulity amused her. “I’m afraid that I’ve not partaken very much in the amusements of Kings Landing.”

“Would you like to? I can make it so.”

Barba thought it was an odd thing to say, and almost gave him an uncharacteristically teasing reply. Then she looked into his face and saw how intently he was looking at her.

“No, I do enjoy my quiet. And Lord Manderly and his daughters have been wonderful hosts, and taken me to see and do anything that I desire. I’ve been to the market day, attended dinners with Lord Manderly and his friends-“

“And that is what you desire?” His eyes, dark and deep as the night woods, were fixed on her face.

He had been so ordinary, so friendly as they circled the dance floor together, that for a while Barba had forgotten about the strange shiver which had run through her that morning when she saw him in the godswood. But now it was back. It set her arms and legs all full of pins and needles, made her body turn stiff as a wooden pole. She was acutely aware of Ser Ryam’s arm slung round her waist, and the way her shoulder was wedged against his chest. Every point where her body rested against his burned, an unwholesome heat like wildfire.

She took a step back, and he let her.

“Yes, that’s all I need to enjoy myself,” she insisted. “And I have been having a wonderful time.”

Then they were standing by where Lord Manderly and Lynara sat, and Ser Ryam bowed to them and to Barba and said, “I bid you a good night, lady,” and departed.

“Who was that?” asked Lynara. There were little glints of gold dancing in her eyes. Reflections of the lantern light, but Barba thought they were like mischief.

“That’s Ser Ryam Florent,” said Lord Manderly, surprising the both of them.

He might have said more too, but Barba, afraid at the notion that she wanted to know what he knew, quickly interjected, “I’ve a headache, my lord, and wish to go to bed now.”

Lynara immediately turned solicitous. While her father stayed below with Mara, she walked Barba back up to their rooms and bid Lyra look after her well.

Before she left, she said, “You are quite happy, dear Barba?”

Barba agreed, and asked why she questioned it. “Perhaps it’s difficult to tell, since I am so stern, as you like to say.”

But Lynara was solemn for once. She hovered by the door, her hands clasped tight in front of her. Tendrils of golden hair had come loose from her coiffure over the course of the evening, so she seemed to have acquired a fuzzy halo gathered tight around her head.

“You’ve seemed happy,” she said, finally. “But today - tonight especially - your spirits seemed strange. Almost - fey.”

“Am I riding before my doom?” asked Barba. “Does your mermaid blood tell you so?”

Lynara rolled her eyes. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times that is not where the merman on our banners comes from - but never mind that. Promise me you’ll be careful?”

“Careful from what?”

But Lynara did not have an answer for that. She returned to the dancing below, and Lyra undressed Barba and put her to bed.

There she lay awake and alone and cold, trying to understand what exactly had unnerved her so in those last few moments walking with Ser Ryam. She had never been a fanciful person, but even if she had been, surely a person so ordinary as Ser Ryam couldn’t have upset her? Was this feeling being upset at all?

She tried to close her eyes and sleep, but all she saw were fields of ice and snow that rolled endlessly away from her, and in the distance a castle upon a wide flat river, unlike any she had ever seen in her life.

In the morning, she decided, she would forget all about it. She had more important concerns to think on.

—

Still, now that Barba had met Ser Ryam, she seemed to see him again with startling frequency. 

When she walked in the godswood with Lynara and Mara, she'd look out of the corner of her eye to see him strolling along, sometimes alone but sometimes in the company of some men she thought were his kinsmen. When she dined with the Manderlys at the king's board, he would make a point of coming by to greet her and Lord Manderly as though he was just passing by, though Barba very clearly saw him returning to his seat afterward. If he saw Barba walking in the halls alone, her maid trailing after her, he'd stop at her elbow and offer to escort her wherever he needed to go, though she always refused him.

One time, as she stood in the market eating a sweetmeat as Mara bargained with a merchant, she'd looked up to see him standing just a few stalls down, staring so hard it made her skin shiver. Barba had wondered if he was hungry; there had been a peculiar expression in his eyes. She had to stroke the fox fur of her cloak to unknot the nerves which had quivered in her stomach.

The Manderly sisters, of course, were convinced that he must be in love with her. "Oh, cruel Barba," said Lynara in a low, husky voice as Mara feigned a swoon. "You wound me with your blue Bolton eyes. You ravish me with you smile. Your loveliness flays my heart bare!"

Mara broke from her swoon and gave her sister a disgusted look. "That last one makes no sense at all! Hearts don't have skin!"

She had been somewhat more helpful in that she had asked Lord Steffon, her suitor, for more information about what kind of man Ser Ryam was. He was indeed the heir to Brightwater Keep, as his uncle was elderly and had no children of his own. He had come to Kings Landing to escort his sisters to the Maiden's Day Ball. And now the party was lingering because it seemed that he was seeking to make matches for them, just as Lord Manderly was for Mara. 

But in himself Ser Ryam seemed rather unremarkable. No one particularly praised him nor said anything against him. He was twenty-two. While House Florent had nominally supported the greens, he did not seem to have stirred himself or his men beyond a few skirmishes surrounding the two sacks of Tumbleton. But then he had been only a lad for most of the Dance, Barba thought, and his uncle's only male heir, so she did not consider his inaction a result of cowardice. 

"And they are quite wealthy," Mara went on, ticking off what she’d learned on her fingers. “They've fields and fields of barley - or is it rye? Anyhow, they do good business brewing some kind of liquor. And they are one of the Reach houses which trace their descent from Garth Greenhand, and are forever harrying the Tyrells because they believe that they ought to be the Wardens of the South instead of them." 

She raised an eyebrow at Barba, who flushed a little. There had been no major conflict between the Starks and the Boltons in several generations, but they all knew her house's history. 

It was nonsense, of course, but Mara and Lynara's joking about the fertile fields of the Reach did give her a thought. King Aegon would not send any food north with her when she returned, but that did not mean Barba could not bring up the matter to others she had met at the Red Keep. Though her brother had sent her south with a heavy purse, she had been always been frugal in her habits. She wrote him for permission, and when it came, she spoke to Lord Manderly about it.

"It's a nice thought," said Lord Manderly. Since Mara and Lynara were away, he did not bother with softening his words. "But even rough grain and salt will come dear, this time of winter. You have only been to the wealthier parts of the city, as I have tried to shield you and my daughters. But there is a famine upon the Crownlands and the Riverlands, and every man means to look after himself. You will find few willing to take your coin."

"Few," echoed Barba, "but not no one. Even a little more grain and salt would make a difference. Please, Lord Manderly, inquire where I may buy some quality goods, even if there is not very much."

He promised he would, and so she knew he would, because everyone knew Lord Manderly was a man of his word. And because he had been a regent for King Aegon, and still had many friends in Kings Landing, she trusted he would find her a likely lead.

In the meanwhile, Barba resolved, she would be patient. Lord Manderly was being called upon by the king’s council for his advice regarding the situation in the Stepstones, as Lord Peake wanted to establish a presence on Bloodstone. And he was in earnest talks now with Lord Sunderland regarding Mara’s marriage contract, since it seemed Lord Steffon was insisting they get married before the end of the year.

"But will your mother even come in time?" Barba had asked. "What's all the hurry about?"

Mara hadn't replied. Her beet-red face was explanation enough anyway, as far as Barba was concerned. She supposed that they were young people in love, so it had to be expected.

So she was rather surprised when, on a walk alone through the godswood, Ser Ryam came up beside her and said, "I hear my lady is looking to make a bargain."

Barba was walking alone today, and because it was a chillier day than usual she walked swiftly with her chin tucked tight against her chest. She had not seen him walking toward her. Now she startled so violently it emptied her of all breath.

Ser Ryam automatically caught her by the arm. "Are you alright, my lady?" he demanded. The air of laidback civility he usually wore was stripped away for a second; his forest-deep eyes bored into her, and Barba realized what made her so nervous around him sometimes.

He seemed to come at her with the single-minded focus of a huntsman.

"I am quite well, thank you," she said quickly.

"You seemed deep in thought," he remarked.

Indeed Barba had been thinking about all sorts of things. She had been thinking about the collapsed storehouses upon the banks of the Weeping Water, and how anything she could manage to buy here in Kings Landing would only fill up a corner of one. She had been thinking about how conflicted Lord Manderly seemed nowadays - though he remained resolute that his place was in White Harbor and not on the council of regents, those who would see Lord Peake's influence lessened in court were trying to convince him otherwise.

And she was thinking of weddings - the royal wedding which would take place in just a few months, where the child-king who was a widower at thirteen years old would be marrying a little girl, the wedding which would take place soon between Lord Steffon and Mara, which she might attend depending on how long she and the Manderlys would be delayed here in Kings Landing, and her own wedding which her brothers were surely arranging for her, now that she was coming back home still Barba Bolton. She was almost seventeen; it was high time she wed and start having children, though she could not really imagine what it would be like.

"It's the weather," she explained. "I'm always melancholy when it's about to snow."

Ser Ryam looked up at the sky. "How do you know it's going to snow? It looks the same to me as it's looked all winter."

Barba withdrew her hand from the warmth of her mink muff to gesture at the clouds. "It's the color of the sky - that strange silver - grey - greenish - what have you. And the flat bottoms of those clouds. The wind had died, and there's a muffled feeling in the air. It'll start snowing within the hour, mark my words."

"Shouldn't you return to the castle, if it's about to snow?"

She shrugged. "I'm used to it. And walking in a snowstorm is not the same as walking in the rain. The snowflakes are gentle, and everything is hushed, and it's all rather - lovely." Besides, she wanted to pray before the heart tree, even if it was just a glorified oak tree and not a real weirwood.

He was giving her an odd look. "You love the winter."

"I love the snow," countered Barba, offended. "It snows in the summer too, at home. It snows all the time. Who could love something so cruel as winter? Do you think I'm as heartless as that?" Her head felt heavy, and the icy cold of the air was making her face hurt. She thrust her hand back into the muff and resumed walking down the path, the snow crunching and squeaking underfoot.

Her flight had clearly taken Ser Ryam unawares, because it took him a few minutes to catch up to her again. "I mean no offense, my lady! I only wondered what you would think of a place without snow."

Up ahead, the rings of trees which made up the middle of the godswood were coming into view. "I would miss the snow," Barba admitted. "But the smallfolk there must surely lead an easier life."

"And you care for the smallfolk. You spoke of them to King Aegon at the Maiden's Day Ball."

Without asking, he took a hold of her arm again to help her over the heaped up snow off the path. The great oak loomed ahead, waiting. What am I praying for? Barba thought. The gods aren't in that old tree. They are all back home.

But it was all she had here in Kings Landing, and so she arranged her skirts and her fox fur cloak neatly around her before she knelt in the snow. Tucking her hands back into the muff, she started to bow her head. Then she heard the crunch of snow again, and Ser Ryam was there beside her, kneeling down too.

"I did not know you followed the old gods," she said, astonished. The Blackwoods did, and some Vale houses, but certainly no families in the Reach? That region was well-known as a stronghold of the Seven.

"I don't," he said.

She watched as he awkwardly tried to adjust his own cloak, tucking its folds under his knees to keep his breeches from getting too wet. He folded his hands in prayer like they did at the sept, grimacing a little at the cold. "Are there any particular prayers to say?" he asked her.

"Your septons tell you what prayers you're supposed to say?" Barba knew that the Faith of the Seven was rather more regimented than that of the old gods. The Manderlys all followed the Seven, but they had never expected her to attend a service, so she wasn't sure how exactly it went. Still, it was odd - who was the priest to tell the worshipper what they should want?

"You may talk to the old gods as naturally as you might to someone else,” she explained. “Only be honest in your desires." Or so that was how her little-remembered mother had taught her to pray a long, long time ago.

She shut her eyes and bowed her head again. This time Ser Ryam stayed silent by her side, and she spared a brief moment to wonder what he might be praying for before she started her own.

She prayed that her family was well, and that no one else at the Dreadfort or the surrounding villages had died. She prayed that Lord Manderly would get Mara's betrothal to his satisfaction soon, and that the couple would be happy. And she prayed that she would be able to get her hands on some grain before it was time to return north.

When Barba opened her eyes, she was surprised to see that Ser Ryam was still praying. He mouthed words to himself under his breath, but she was respectful enough to not try and make out what he was saying.

She took the opportunity to study him. As usual, he was dressed in sumptuous clothing - blue velvet again, this time all embroidered with gold thread. His heavy russet cloak was edged in rabbit fur, as was the blue cap pulled low over his ears. She thought his face was plain but pleasant too. It was broad and somewhat square, with a long nose and heavy-lidded eyes. Only when he opened those eyes and looked at her in that strange way of his did Barba grow nervous. Even now, as his eyelids started to flutter open, she looked away quickly.

"You said something about a bargain, ser. A vow said before the heart tree is said to be inviolable, so I recommend you choose your words carefully." Did he have some message he wanted her to pass on to Lord Manderly, perhaps? Though why he could not go to him directly, she did not know.

Her knees were growing a bit stiff from kneeling in the snow, but since Ser Ryam made no move to get to his feet, she did not either. He crossed his arms, tucking his bare hands against his sides, and smiled at her. "I have heard, Lady Barba, that you are looking to take food back north, whether or not King Aegon is the one to lend you that aid. I believe that House Florent may be of some assistance."

Barba's heart lurched hopefully in her chest. Of course Lord Manderly would have mentioned her request to the Reach-lords! And of course House Florent, with its fields of grain and relative peace during the Dance, would have something to sell her. Was it barley they grew, or rye? Either way it could be used for bread and beer.

"I can send you a shipload of barley," he said. "Three thousand bushels of it. Next year I can send you a thousand bushels, and the year after that too, as long as winter lasts. In addition, I can send you fifty casks of barleywine and eighty casks of beer, though I am not sure how much else I can send -"

The numbers he was naming were making Barba's head spin. Clearly he had gotten the wrong idea, if he thought she was authorized to strike such a massive deal on her brother's behalf - or if he thought House Bolton had the coin to pay for it.

"You must be mistaken, ser - I appreciate your generosity, but I only mean to buy a little grain. Perhaps forty or fifty bushels now to send on ahead of me to White Harbor, and more later if it is possible."

Fifty bushels stretched thin would feed the town below the Dreadfort for a few months - three thousand bushels could with some careful stewardship keep everyone in their lands limping along for a whole year. Three thousand bushels was far too much to even dream of. And House Florent had that much to sell? She knew the Reach was a fertile realm, but she was only just starting to comprehend what that meant. She worked to school her expression, to hide her interest.

Ser Ryam leaned forward, close enough that she could feel the ghost of his breath across her icy cheek, and shook his head. "You misunderstand me, my lady. The price I want -"

"I can pay two gold dragons for every three bushels," Barba cut in quickly. After discussing it with Lord Manderly, Lyra, and various unsuspecting merchants down at market, she had settled on that as the appropriate price.

He sighed a little. She had the sense he was impatient, and this annoyed her. "I cannot pay more, Ser Ryam. While as I said I do appreciate your generosity, the matter remains that the snows are deep -"

"Yes, yes, and your people are starving. I know."

Stung, Barba struggled to her feet, dropping her muff and treading on the hem of her long woolen skirts in her haste. She had thought Ser Ryam - well, perhaps not completely a sympathetic person, but a congenial enough one, and to be mocked now made her furious. "There are other sellers in the Red Keep, ser! And perhaps you think it silly that I am buying so little when you wish to sell me so much, but -"

He lurched to his feet too, reaching out to snatch at her. Barba tried to rip herself free, frightened - but he only stuck the fallen muff back over her hand and let go of her again. There was a long wet stain on his right knee where he'd skidded for purchase in the snow. "You will find no other sellers!"

Barba scoffed. There was a cold hard anger brewing in her chest, the leaden anger of a Bolton. Her voice went soft in the way that her father’s voice had always gone in the moment before he sentenced a poacher to die. “Is that meant to be a threat, ser? Are you so eager for my custom as that?”

Ser Ryam gave a hard swallow. She advanced on him, another step or two or more; she stood so close to him that she could see his pupils dilating until there was only a thin green sliver visible around them.

“I - I think, Lady Barba, that I can give you a better offer than anyone else. That is all I mean.”

He flinched a little as a snowflake grazed against his ear. The snow had started, and was coming down in big fluffy flakes now. The light in the godswood had gone a gloomy violet-grey. Soon the wind would rise and whirl the snowflakes into frantic little flurries. The trunks of the bare trees were brown here, not white, but everything else was just like home. Barba was comforted.

“What exactly is that offer?” she inquired. “Do you mean to propose a trade in kind? Do you want our yellow pinewood? Our tin? What use is it to House Florent?”

He seemed to recover a little of his confidence, and his smooth tongue with it. “I do desire something of House Bolton, lady. Indeed, I desire something which only House Bolton may give me. It is a very valuable thing, which is why I offered you so much in return. Three thousand bushels of barley, and a thousand bushels every year of this winter thereafter - I do not offer it lightly.”

What he might want in return was not something Barba could figure. “So what is it you want? Stark-skin cloaks? The Dreadfort itself?”

“Stark-skin -” Ser Ryam broke off and shook his head. He looked a little green at the thought, but he was smiling a pleased little smile too. His strangeness vexed her terribly. She almost wanted to hiss her disapproval at him, and she nearly did. But the next words he said disarmed her completely.

“No, Lady Barba,” said Ser Ryam. “What I desire is your hand in marriage.”

It occurred her for the first time, then, that she might be dreaming. Her brother Myles had always said that he had strange dreams when he fell asleep in the godswood. Why not Barba? Perhaps when she had settled down to pray in front of the heart tree, she’d nodded off completely, and all of this was some bizarre dream.

The hazy light through the snow certainly lent the whole scene a surreal air. The snowflakes which caught and melted in her hair, on the other hand, were too vivid to have been conjured up by her mind.

“My lady?” asked Ser Ryam. Barba realized that she had been staring silently at him for a little too long.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Maybe because she had not immediately refused - Ser Ryam's smile turned triumphant. "I thought that it could be drawn up as a part of our marriage contract, as what my house will offer yours -"

"I know how marriage contracts work!" Barba's voice was more shrill than she'd ever heard herself sound. Embarrassed, she took a deep breath before she continued, "My question, Ser Ryam, is twofold. Why should you, a man of the Reach, wish to wed a woman of the North, and why do you intend to offer such favorable terms to secure the match? And, now that I think of it, why are you speaking to me about this, and not my brother or Lord Manderly?"

Ser Ryam swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand, which was when Barba noticed that despite the cold, he had broken out in a sweat. "I wanted to speak to you first, to be sure that you were amenable to my proposal. Lady, are you amenable?"

Well, it was true that he was about her age and not very terrible to look at. He seemed friendly and sensible. She appreciated a clever man.

Much more importantly, he would be Lord Florent after his uncle, and House Florent was an old and powerful house. It would take her out of the North, and that was a pity. But otherwise, being Lady Florent was a better prospect than marrying a younger Tallhart or Ryswell, which Barba knew were the options her brother was considering for her. And if he truly meant to give the Dreadfort three thousand bushels of barley -

"But you must explain why," she insisted. That was the rub of it. She could not trust him unless she knew the catch.

To Barba's surprise, a slow flush started up Ser Ryam's neck. He wiped his forehead again, then in an excess of exasperation tore the hat off his head and crushed it under his arm.

"Because - because - You drive me mad! They tell me some ancestor of yours was a terrible sorcerer - and I am convinced that you are a witch! I saw you before the king, and then I saw you near me - heard your voice - and then I knew that if the king tried to make you his wife, I knew I would have killed him, lady - in front of all the court and the Kingsguard too, I would have!"

Barba's mouth dropped open so wide that Princess Rhaena's dragon probably could have flown into it. Of course Lynara and Mara had made their jokes, but their mimickry of overblown ardor was one thing, and Ser Ryam's face right now was quite another. Did madness run in House Florent? Had he taken leave of his senses? "You're talking wildly! You know nothing about me!"

"I know all about you now," he countered. "I have followed you everywhere you go within the Red Keep, and out into Kings Landing too. I have spoken to Lord Manderly and all the other northern lords and lady I could find. I paid your servants to spy on you for me - no, not your tirewoman, but the maids from Kings Landing who cleaned your chambers and hauled your water. And from everyone I learned about what you were like, and what you enjoyed and what you disliked. I knew I needed to offer you something to get you, but until recently no one seemed to know what you wanted. I should have known, though; you said it to the king on that very first day."

She should have been furious, but she was too confused for it. "But why?"

"I want you," he said, simply. "I need you."

"You need to see a maester -"

Ser Ryam lost his temper at that. "What do you care? Perhaps I'm mad, perhaps I'm unwell - I think I am unwell, because every time you look at me I think I'm about to burst into flames. When we dance together, I wanted to throw you over my shoulder and carry you off like a wildling raider. And even now, lady, I want to throw you down on your godsdamned fox furs and toss up your skirts. What have you to say about that?"

Barba probably should have fled. He didn't move to touch her, but she could read tension in every line of his body. Stand here a little longer, and maybe he really would lose control of himself. Or worse - maybe by staying, she was intimating that him losing control of himself would be acceptable to her.

Then again, Ser Ryam claimed he knew everything there was to know about her, so he must know that the moment he laid a hand on her, she would gut him like a fish.

So she stood her ground, raised her chin to look him square in those eyes which she now understood burned with hunger. "I'm afraid you've got that story wrong."

"What?"

The wind was rising, making the snow flurry around them. If Barba felt cold, then he must be freezing. Still, neither of them moved.

"You must be speaking of the Night's King," she explained. "My sorcerer ancestor - of course, some people say he could have been Woodfoot or a Norrey or even a Stark, but most know he was a Bolton. He was Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, until one day he saw a woman over the wall - a corpse woman with snow-white skin and eyes like blue stars. He left behind his duties and his men and rode over to the snow, and when he found her he made her his queen and lost his soul. So you must admit that he was the one who was ensnared by his love, and not the one doing the ensnaring. Whoever told you the story did not tell it to you a-right."

"Then you learned your tricks from her," Ser Ryam insisted, jutting out his lower lip for emphasis, like a child. "If she was his wife, then you are descended from her too. I do not care how it happened. You haunt me like a ghost, and that is no longer acceptable. So will you wed me, Lady Barba, or must I abduct you?"

She could explain to him that House Bolton was certainly not descended from the Night's King and his corpse queen, who besides being evil had been slain after a mere thirteen-year reign - but it seemed beside the point.

Barba studied him. He had quite broad shoulders, so he could pick her up quite easily.

What had happened to all his cunning, all the vaunted chivalry of the Reach? He babbled like an idiot, but the look on his face was as savage as a wildling's. Yet she was not afraid of him, because if he really loved her then he was utterly in her palm of her hand, like that long ago Bolton who’d been ensorcelled by his corpse queen.

She stroked the fox fur pinned over her shoulder and wondered, for one credulous moment, whether she had somehow unknowingly cast some spell over him.

If Mara were here, she'd be clasping her hands together all starry-eyed. Lynara would be laughing herself sick. And her brothers would take turns skewering him through with their swords while their wives egged them on, outraged at the impropriety and affront of it all. But it was just her and Ser Ryam now, standing alone together in the godswood on a dark afternoon.

"How do I know you would keep your promise?" she asked. "You are not the head of House Florent yet, to promise things on its behalf.”

Ser Ryam's face brightened. "Yes, but I am the one who does all the business of being lord already. We did not do so badly during the Dance - and my uncle wants me to wed. I will make him understand that I will have no other but you."

"Three thousand bushels of barley upon our wedding," Barba checked. "And a thousand bushels for every year of winter I live with you in Brightwater Keep, for the rest of our lives. Do you swear it? Will you have a maester draw up the papers, and swear to it here in court?"

“I will,” he promised. He held himself as tight as a drawn bowstring.

Barba, with a glance over at the great old oak, figured that it was close enough to a vow before the old gods as could be managed now. Still, she wanted further reassurance.

“I will need a weirwood tree planted at Brightwater Keep. Whether the sapling comes from the north or the Isle of Gods or somewhere closer at hand, I do not care. But it must be planted in the ground before we wed, and it is there that we will say our vows to each other. And if it dies before then, I will not wed you.”

“It will not die,” said Ser Ryam simply. “Our soil is rich, and there are weirwoods in Highgarden. I will make sure one thrives at Brightwater Keep.”

Barba doubted he knew much about gardening personally, but he spoke with so much certainty that she did not doubt him. After the lengths he’d apparently gone to put together a favorable proposal, she wouldn’t put anything else past him. It was a useful quality in a husband.

“Meet those two conditions,” she promised, “and I shall be your wife.”

She removed one of her hands from the muff then, and gave it to Ser Ryam to hold, to shake on it. But he, misunderstanding, lifted it to his lips instead and kissed her palm quite thoroughly. His mouth tickled as it moved over her skin.

Barba told herself that was the only reason she shivered.