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His sister is not the only woman to have stood atop the Wall.

It’s said that when Queen Alysanne looked out over the wild north all those years ago, she wept. Gilly had wept too, for the child that Jon would take from her, and her eyes, red and swollen, her gasping mouth like a wound, they still come to him sometimes in his dreams. For a moment she was fierce, almost feral, her gaze cutting toward the barren white land that once was her home -- saying goodbye, Jon realizes now, a cry and a curse. When he packed her away with Sam and the baby that had been Dalla’s, Gilly, shrinking into Sam’s thickest furs, looked very young.

Gilly’s heartache, Val’s keen understanding. Warm-breathed babies held to the wrong breast. What’s done is done, but he still remembers.

And Melisandre, of course, red as blood against the pale snow, the blueing ice. Always leaning close to Stannis Baratheon, her whispers shimmering in the air. She did not weep, but her smiles cut sharper than a woman’s tears.

But the women have gone from the Wall, all of them sent away, all except Sansa, who has never cried in front of Jon, though there are days when her eyes are a frostbitten blue, sorrow that runs deep, beyond words. There are days when Sansa asks him to take her to the top of the Wall, and she catches snowflakes on her tongue and on the tips of her gloved fingers. She stands tall above the white world, with all its treachery, its eerie danger, its vast nothingness, and it is almost as if she belongs to it -- or it belongs to her.

‘Be careful,’ he says, and the way she twists her mouth, it’s as if she wants to laugh. He can’t understand it. He can’t understand her. The little girl he knew, with her songs, her scorn, her glittering dreams, she has vanished inside a gleaming shell of frozen beauty, brilliant as a lake of ice and just as still, as unmoving.

She calls him brother now. She has said, ‘Father would be proud of you.’ What must she have seen in these years, that being a bastard is a sin that can be forgiven? What must she have faced in warmer seasons, to turn her whole heart to the North in the coldest part of winter?

*

The day the Blackfish brought her to the Wall, Jon thought, traitorously, monstrously, what about Arya? But then Sansa looked out from under her hood, and she saw Jon, saw into him somehow, recognized, he was certain, that his grief was the same as hers, just as piercing, just as endless. Their father, Robb, Bran, Rickon, Arya, even Lady Catelyn -- all gone. Dead, lost, stolen.

Jon knew then that he wouldn’t let Sansa be taken the same way, a casualty of fate, just another plaything of gods and kings.

*

So he waits for all of Westeros to come for her: Petyr Baelish, with his hands tightening around Winterfell, the Lannisters and their marriage claim, Stannis Baratheon who would not hesitate to use her in a play for the North, and even the rumored Targaryen dragons across the sea, the beasts his men gossip about over hot stew and weak ale.

What he does not expect is a dead man dressed in the robes of a Brother of the Faith.

Jon is in the training yard, observing the new recruits -- few as they are, pitiful as they are -- when Sandor Clegane is brought before him at the point of a sword. ‘He gave up his blade easy, ser, and his horse too,’ Owen says, ‘but I’d know his face anywhere. This is the Mad Dog of Saltpans.’ He says it as if his own brethren aren’t rapers and murderers, as if the crimes that have brought so many of them to this place are nothing, nothing at all, beside the sins of the Hound.

But Clegane pays no heed to Owen’s disgust, and seems barely to notice his sword. He must see Ghost, white and enormous at Jon’s feet -- but he does not show fear when he lifts his face.

It is a hideous face, more hideous than Jon remembered, a ruined, gruesome thing, and Jon must remind himself that he has seen more terrible things in this life. A man’s scars are nothing to turn away from.

‘Is it true,’ Clegane says, but the wind whips through the courtyard and takes his words, just as Owen eases forward, blade high. He would like an excuse to strike, but Clegane is merciful enough not to give it to him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, even in the cutting wind. He says, a little louder than before, ‘The girl. Lady Sansa Stark -- ’ The name is dangerous in his mouth. ‘I -- heard she was alive. That she’s here.’ He fixes his burning eyes on Jon. ‘Is she?’

‘Leave him with me.’

Jon says it calmly, and calmly he waits for Owen to retreat. He doesn’t reach for Longclaw, though his instinct is to cut the Hound’s throat right here. With Ghost, it would be easy. Then again -- this man, even in his thin holy robes, damp up to the knees and boots stinking, with chapped, bleeding hands and one bad leg that he drags a little when he walks, he is huge and primed for viciousness, eager for the bloodlust. Even without a sword he might tear a man to pieces. He would go down, but fighting.

‘Come.’ Jon leads Clegane away from the training grounds, away from Castle Black and the eyes and the ears of his brothers in arms. Close behind, Ghost stalks over drifts of snow, just two red eyes in a dense cloud of white.

All Jon knows is that he will not let him at Sansa. This man and his half-human face, his brutish body, like the Stranger incarnate, built of scar tissue and thick bone -- he will not harm her.

They stand in silence, snow falling like fire, their breath smoking in the space between them.

‘You’ve traveled a long way for a rumor.’

Shrugging, Clegane says, ‘Might be I have.’

‘I’m asking why.’

‘That’s not for you to hear.’

Jon squares his shoulders and touches the hilt of Longclaw, and when he speaks again, he feels like a man grown, a leader of warriors, not the little boy he was when he exiled himself to this Wall in the hope of winning his father’s love. Not the boy who could do nothing while his family was slaughtered.

‘The girl you speak of is my sister.’ He tightens his grip and Ghost snarls in silence, teeth gleaming, deadly. ‘My only sister now, as far as I know. The only Stark left. You can’t imagine I’ll let a monster like you near her.’

Something shines out of Clegane’s face. The knowledge that Sansa is alive, really is alive.

‘I’m a killer, true enough. Same as you. Same as anyone here, isn’t it?’ Clegane sneers and Jon reaches for his wolf. ‘But I am no raper and no Mad Dog. And I don’t mean to hurt her.’

Keeping Clegane in the corner of his vision, Jon kneels, murmuring into the rough white fur at Ghost’s ear, asking a favor, asking for the wolf’s help -- trusting that he is understood -- and then Ghost is gone, bounding away, back to Castle Black.

He straightens and returns his attention to the Hound. ‘What do you mean to do?’

‘Take the black.’

‘If that’s so, you’ve no need to see my sister. You have no business with her, Clegane.’

Clegane grits his teeth and says, ‘I will take the black, if you’ll have me, and slaughter every last wildling and White Walker in the North, but if she is here -- ’ Jon wonders what this man hopes to find in Sansa, wonders if he even knows his sister at all. She would flinch from his ugliness. She would have no kind words to match his coarse ones. ‘I tried walking the penitent's path, kept my damn vows and lit candles to the Seven, but there are not many things I’m truly sorry for in this rotten fucking world.’ His shoulders have gone slack now, his voice rasping in his throat. ‘One of them is her.’

He shakes himself, turning into the bitter wind, and when a grin splits sideways across his face, Jon thinks it must be far worse than his rage. ‘We both know I am no holy brother. Best to take the black. Give me a reason to swing a sword.’

‘A dog looking for a new master.’

‘I bit the last ones right in their fucking arses. But I am no craven and I’ll do right by you.’

Jon has duties to Sansa -- because she is his sister, left in his care by her uncle, and his honor demands he protect her, but most of all because he loves her, because she is all he has left of Winterfell, of a childhood that was, despite everything, happy -- but he is still Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, and he has other duties. He cannot turn a man away, and certainly not one so able.

‘You don’t have to make your case,’ he tells Clegane. ‘If you volunteer, we’ll take you. That’s the way of the Watch.’

Clegane nods.

‘But,’ Jon adds, before he can stop himself, ‘what did you do to her?’

‘The little bird . . . ’

Clegane frowns into another gust of wind, and Jon braces himself, sorrow sounding like an echo through his heart. What he knows of Sansa’s time in King’s Landing is only what he’s gathered through gossip: cast aside by Joffrey in favor of Margaery Tyrell, forced to marry Tyrion Lannister, and fled, vanished, the day of Joffrey’s murder. The Blackfish told him she’d been taken captive by Petyr Baelish, who murdered Lysa Arryn and bartered for power with Sansa’s body.

‘Baelish is scum,’ the Blackfish had said, thinning his lips together in that Tully way, and Jon didn’t ask him what he meant. He’s never asked Sansa about Littlefinger or Joffrey or the Imp. He is afraid that her hurts live like blades beneath her skin, and if he woke them, she would just bleed and bleed and bleed.

Clegane says, very quiet, ‘They gave me a white cloak and it was dirty from the moment I touched it. What they did to her, you must know. Beatings. Threats. Bastard King Joffrey liked it when pretty girls cried.’ Another grin distorts his face, no hint of anything but shame behind it. ‘I didn’t stop him.’

‘You beat her.’

‘Might as well have.’

It all falls into place then, what Clegane is saying. Sansa, imprisoned in King’s Landing, beaten for Joffrey’s amusement, the Hound looking on like the good dog he was. And -- Jon tries not to think it, but he can’t help himself -- where was Robb all this time? He loved Robb and would have gladly called him king, but Jon wishes he could understand why Robb didn’t save their sisters before anything else, why he had been so reckless as to cross Walder Frey. And a thought more impossible still: Where was he? Where was Jon in all this? He knew, of course, that he couldn’t have abandoned the Night’s Watch, not when he was named Lord Commander, not when he was among Ygritte and the free folk, not even when the king cut his father’s head off for treason, but he wishes, still wishes, he could’ve been at Winterfell to protect Bran and Rickon, could’ve saved Sansa from the Lannisters at King’s Landing, could join Brynden Tully in his search for Arya, even if they all know, deep down, that she is dead too.

And it seems even the fearsome Hound is human. He too is burdened with useless regret.

‘You can take the black, if you still wish it,’ Jon says. He holds out his hand to Clegane, a handshake between men, an understanding. They will be brothers, if that is what Clegane decides.

‘As for Sansa -- you will see her only if she wishes to see you. It’s her choice.’

Clegane clasps his hand. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘yes, that’s best,’ and he shakes the snow from his shoulders and withdraws into the darkness of his hood.

*

The white shadow that is Ghost lies sprawled beside Sansa, half blanket, half guardian, keeping her safe just as Jon asked him to do, while Sansa reads one of the books Sam dug up for her, its dusty pages going thin: old legends about the Children of the Forest, about the world beyond the Wall. She’s sitting upright. With one hand she sifts through Ghost’s fur, with the other she holds the book against her bent knees.

‘Good morning.’ She looks up from the book, not smiling, but with softness, as if she doesn’t want Ghost to wake, or doesn’t want Jon to worry. ‘I’ve been wondering something. Do you really think the Others will come?’

‘Don’t frighten yourself thinking about it.’

‘Jon, don’t do that.’ Her tone turns grave. ‘Please answer me.’

‘Yes.’ He sighs. ‘Yes, I think they’ll come. I’m certain of it.’ He drags a heavy chair to her bedside, and sits facing her. ‘We’ve seen them. They will come for the Wall when we are deep into winter. When we are in darkness.’

‘And you’ll send me away when they do?’

‘Before it, I hope.’

She scratches at the dusty page with the edge of her fingernail. ‘Where will I go?’

‘I’ll find somewhere safe for you. I promise.’

If he knew how, he’d comfort her -- hold her, lie to her, offer her whatever she wanted. Instead, he whistles softly, and Ghost, lifting his heavy head, turns his muzzle into Sansa’s face, snuffling, nosing her cheek, her eyelashes, licking her skin until she laughs. She sets the book aside and wraps both arms around Ghost’s neck, and Jon, much as he wants to slip outside of himself, into the wolf -- that newfound power, his newfound secret -- just for the second it takes to know the warmth of Sansa’s embrace, he keeps himself still, inside his own body, content to watch Sansa smile, radiant, girlish, into the wolf’s thick fur.

‘I have to tell you something.’

Her hands go still in Ghost’s coat, and then her back stiffens, but she doesn’t turn to face him. ‘Something’s happened.’ As Sansa draws away from Ghost, Jon sees all her happiness, bright as it was, fade. ‘Is it Petyr?’

‘No -- not him. The latest raven says he’s still treating with the Boltons.’

‘Then what?’ Sitting up straighter, she furrows her brow at him. ‘Tell me.’

‘Sandor Clegane has come to take the black.’

All expression leaves her face -- there is no fear, no surprise, nothing, as if she has turned to ice, as if she’s not quite human at all. A spirit, a wight, one of the children. ‘The Hound,’ she says after a long moment. ‘I thought he was dead.’

‘Are you all right, Sansa?’

‘Of course,’ she says. He can’t tell if it’s a lie. He can’t see past the cold and careful blankness of her eyes. ‘It’s been such a long time since King’s Landing.’

‘Not long enough.’

She doesn’t reply to that, but Jon finds her again, the real Sansa who is no creature of the desolate North; he catches the half-smile that forms on her lips before she notices it herself. ‘Are you debating whether to take him on?’ she asks. ‘He’s very strong.’

‘I don’t doubt it. But Sansa -- ’

‘It’s strange,’ she says. ‘He always hated oaths and vows. He wouldn’t even take one to join the Kingsguard. Now he comes all the way to the Wall to take the most brutal vows there are.’

‘Sansa -- ’ he tries again.

She leans over from where she sits in her bed and squeezes Jon’s hand. ‘You know what I mean. Not all men are made for this life.’

‘But you think he is?’

‘I couldn’t say. He’ll survive the winter, I believe that. He really is very strong. But at King’s Landing, he was a drunk and he had women, whores -- ’ She doesn’t blush at the word. Littlefinger’s influence, no doubt. ‘He wasn’t controlled, the way you are. But he was not without nobility. He showed me -- kindness, I suppose.’

Kindness. The word rings in his ears.

The urge to fight overcomes him, the need to spar, to hear sword clatter against sword. Or to fuck, to hold Ygritte again in that dark cave and forget his oaths and his honor and his life from before.

‘He watched men beat you,’ Jon says, because they are the only words in his mouth, and right away he knows he should have just kept quiet. Sansa turns her head from him, fast, as if she’s been struck again. All because he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know.

And she calls him controlled.

‘How -- ’

‘He told me.’ He slumps in his chair, and she finds him out of the corner of her eye. ‘He came to take the black, but he also came because -- he wants to speak with you. Somehow he heard you were here.’

The implications hit her faster than he expected, faster than he would have liked. ‘So. Word has traveled that I’m at the Wall.’

‘Yes.’

She leans in to Ghost’s body again, rests her head against his cheek. ‘It won’t be safe for me much longer,’ she says.

‘I’m afraid not.’

Jon will stand his ground and fight anyone who comes for her. Ghost will rip them apart. Or he will find somewhere to send her -- somebody he can trust, somewhere that doesn’t have ties to Littlefinger or the Lannisters or Stannis or the Greyjoys. If there is such a place. Some place without so much danger and pain.

He thinks of Ygritte, dead in his arms. Chilling hopelessness clutches at him.

But Sansa touches his hand again, brightening somewhere behind her eyes, and she nudges Ghost out of her way so that she can stand. She’s still in her dressing gown, the coarse fur left Jon bought in Mole’s Town, a little too big for Sansa’s still-young body. ‘Well, then.’ She brushes a hand through her loose hair, and the light from her fire makes the red in it burn darkly, like embers. ‘There’s much to be done.’

She walks to her dressing table, a rickety thing that once was grand, recovered from the King’s Tower. Above it Sansa has affixed a clouded square of mirror to the wall. She has laid out her gown already; it is dun-colored and like to itch. Most of her dresses are humble now, thick-woven for the cold and dyed badly if at all, just two or three crude frocks the Blackfish bought for her as they raced North, but Jon knows she is still the finest lady his men have seen.

‘First. The Hound.’ She looks back at him over her shoulder. ‘You must understand, Jon, he did what he could to help me. He was no hero, but he was trapped too.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

‘You weren’t there, so you have no say. He and I, we were the same. We were just animals in cages.’ She begins to plait her hair, her slim fingers weaving strands together in a pattern he can’t follow, a feminine secret in this place of men. ‘He will be a good fighter for you. Against the Others.’

She holds the end of her braid between two fingers. ‘Could you fetch me a ribbon? From the top drawer.’ Some days she so resembles her mother that it makes him uneasy, but she can smile at him with a gentleness Lady Catelyn never knew. He brings Sansa a blue ribbon that Sam bought for her in Mole’s Town because he thought it would match her eyes, and he watches as she knots it in her hair. ‘In any case,’ she says, ‘we must start making arrangements for me to leave. Before Petyr comes, or the Lannisters.’

‘Yes, of course. I will keep you safe.’

‘And Jon -- ’ He watches her reflection in the mirror, this woman who is his sister, his only family, and he thinks, I can’t lose her too, I can’t. ‘I will speak with Sandor Clegane.’

*

With a new cloak and a hot meal in his stomach, Clegane is even more imposing than he was the day before. He’s hardy, his limp not so noticeable, and though Samwell has wrapped Clegane’s cold-damaged hands in cloth, Jon does not doubt he could swing a sword strong and strike true. But when he enters Sansa’s quarters, past Ghost standing guard at the door, baring the white points of his teeth, and Jon with Longclaw in his grasp in the corner of the room, his step falters. Jon turn in time to see him pale, to see his brief flash of wild fear, like that of a cornered beast. ‘Seven hells,’ Clegane says when Sansa stands to greet him.

‘Ser -- ’ She tilts her head, studying him. ‘No, you never liked to be called that.’

What Clegane must realize then is what Jon knew the moment Sansa lowered her hood beside Brynden Tully: that she is a woman now. Young, still very young -- scarcely older than Jon was when he found his way to the Wall -- but not that reed of a girl who lived in songs and tattled to her mother when Arya tore her dresses, the girl who twirled through the halls of Winterfell after Prince Joffrey kissed her hand, giggling, spinning right past Jon as if he was nobody at all, as if he wasn’t even really there. Oh, she had grown taller, her body fuller, more womanish, but that she would become so very beautiful was no surprise. It was the way she wore her face now that struck him, her expression less open, but somehow more haunted too, like all the blues of her eyes and her veins and her secret, hidden bruises, they might grow dark as midnight with each new ache of her heart.

‘I thought you were dead,’ he says at last.

‘I could say the same.’

She doesn’t turn away from the hideousness of Clegane’s face. Her eyes travel his scars like a pilgrim treading familiar ground.

‘Please sit,’ she says.

‘Still so polite.’

‘Your leg is injured. You should sit. Have a cup of tea.’

She takes her own chair first, and then he drops into the one she made Jon set out for him. His discomfort is clear in the way he holds his body, overly rigid, his arms crossed against his chest, and he doesn’t touch the cup Sansa pours for him. He glances over to the corner where Jon stands watch. Very deliberately, Jon does not move his hand from his sword.

‘I don’t think your brother wants me to sit down.’

‘He just doesn’t want to leave me alone with you.’

‘He’s not a fool, then.’

‘He’s your new Lord Commander. You should treat him as such. It’s only proper.’

‘Proper.’ He spits the word out, sharp with irony, but then he notices what Jon saw all along -- that she’s laughing at him -- and he grins, brief and not so awful as Jon remembers. Less hateful, perhaps, or perhaps Jon is just growing accustomed to him.

‘Did you really mind my courtesies so much, back then? I had no intention of offending you. But you frightened me. You must know that.’

‘I do know that.’

‘I don’t mean your face. Not just that.’

‘I know,’ he says -- almost gently. Jon furrows his brow.

Sansa sips her tea and says, ‘You will be glad to hear that courtesy hasn’t much use this far North. I’ve been learning that. All those lessons of King’s Landing, speak like this and wear this dress and don’t let anyone see what you really think, and now all the people in the world are Jon and Maester Samwell and the black brothers who must pretend they don’t know who I am but who still won’t come near me for fear Jon will set Ghost on them.’

He leans forward in his seat, bending his scarred face toward Sansa. Too familiar, Jon thinks, as if he’s spoken with her in this way before. It’s enough to make Jon’s stomach clench. ‘How did you come to be here? Last I heard you’d killed Joffrey and left your Imp husband to face the consequences.’ Lies, lies, of course lies -- but Jon has never dared to ask. ‘What happened to you, girl?’

‘A story too long to tell. I was in the care of Petyr Baelish for a time, before my uncle brought me here, where it was safer. As for Joffrey -- I didn’t kill him, nor did Tyrion, but it hardly matters now.’ She fixes her steady gaze on him with a seriousness that surprises Jon and seems to unsettle Clegane, who shifts in his seat again, head still bent close to hers. ‘And you? Some said the Hound went mad and sacked Saltpans. Some said you just died. Neither appears to be true.’

‘It was not me in Saltpans.’

‘I knew it wasn’t.’

Jon can’t see Clegane’s face, he’s leaning so far in, but he notes the tension in Clegane’s broad shoulders. From this angle, the man’s missing ear is a bright red wound, livid in the cold, visible between greasy strands of his hair. A monster, and altogether too close to Sansa.

‘I lived on the Quiet Isle, if you can believe it, like a real Brother of the Faith. Dug graves, had my try at holiness. Wasn’t much of a success.’

‘Are you called Brother Sandor?’ Sansa asks and Jon can’t tell if she finds the prospect worthy of horror or laughter.

‘Not now.’

Her smile slips through once more, before she bites her lip and asks, ‘But -- how did you hear I was at the Wall?’

‘The story’s out there. Might be a raven was sent that shouldn’t have been, from one of these crows tired of pretending he doesn’t know you. Might be somebody just made a guess. There are a lot of people searching for you, you know, a lot of shit-brains hoping to claim a reward, and some more dangerous than that. I’ve seen a handful of them over the years. Thought they were all chasing the wind.’

‘You saw them on the Quiet Isle?’

‘Some of them thought to follow your sister’s trail. Found me along the way.’

Jon’s stomach leaps up to his lungs. That skinny girl, all bones, jumping into his arms. Her way of calling people stupid, so stupid, anger sparkling like humor in her eyes. Her gave her a little sword -- Needle, she called it -- that made her love him, that made him miss her, all the more.

‘Arya?’ he breathes, lifting his hand from Longclaw’s hilt. He takes a step forward, and another, and this time he feels no hesitation looking into Clegane’s face. ‘Our sister Arya?’

‘The little she-wolf. Caught her with Beric Dondarrion’s men. I meant to ransom her to the Blackfish or Lady Arryn if I could, but someone nearly killed me along the way.’ He pats his thigh, grimacing. ‘The bitch left me for dead, and good for her. Elder Brother found me after that and ought to have left me for dead too.’ He studies Jon for a long moment before he turns to meet Sansa’s eyes, wide with emotion, warmer than Jon’s seen in a very long time. ‘I don’t know what happened to her. She talked about coming to the Wall, I think, but I take it she never made it. I don’t know if she’s still alive.’

‘Arya,’ Sansa says, and presses a hand over her mouth.

‘She’s a fierce one,’ Clegane says. ‘Could be she made it out, but I’ve not heard a word of her since. That girl the Bastard of Bolton married sure as hell isn’t her.’

Jon pretends that his heart isn’t rabbiting in his chest, that despair isn’t welling up once more. How could he have let himself hope, even just for a second? He’s a man now. He can’t expect another miracle -- one sister safe and alive is already more than he’d ever imagined. But that Arya was once so close . . . that if only things had happened just a little differently, they might have . . .

If only . . .

‘Wait,’ he says. The pieces are coming together now, the ways he lost his family, the ways he might have found them again, if the gods had been on his side. ‘You nearly went to the Eyrie. To ransom Arya to Lysa Arryn.’

‘It was just a plan. Didn’t get far. Why’s it matter?’

‘Because I was at the Eyrie,’ answers Sansa, and Clegane’s gaze rivets to her. ‘Petyr is Lord Protector of the Vale now, didn’t you know?’ She folds in on herself for a moment, rubbing her arms, and Jon thinks she is going to cry before he realizes that she is just cold. The fire has almost guttered out.

‘I’ll do it,’ Jon offers, but Sansa shakes her head and crosses to the fireplace.

‘It’s strange that you were almost there, and with Arya too,’ she says, feeding scraps of paper to the fire, fanning the fading embers. She leans back on her heels, turning a shaft of wood over and over again with the poker, and it is a long time before she speaks again. ‘But it’s just like the world to be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Tricky.’ A shadow crosses her brow as one splinter of the log at last catches light. ‘I used to imagine sometimes that you would come to save me. And then I would think, but who will save me from you?’

She wipes the soot on her skirt and returns to her seat. Jon wonders if it bothers her, the dirt under her nails, the dresses she must wash herself, the fire she has learned to start on her own.

Clegane’s gaze flickers away from the fireplace. ‘You’ve figured it out then, have you?’ Clegane doesn’t sound cruel, but Sansa holds her teacup like some part of her wants to throw it. Jon knows he should intervene -- knows he should’ve stopped it before it even started -- but he can’t bring himself to do it, can’t make himself do anything but bear witness to Sansa’s past grief and the emotions she pushes down so deep inside her. At least it might help him understand.

‘There are no heroes, I do know that now,’ she says. ‘But men can be good, can’t they?’

‘You live with killers, girl. Killers and criminals guard this Wall. You think your brother has given you this room with its big lock and sets his beast out to guard you because of the goodness of men?’

‘Yes,’ Sansa answers. ‘His goodness. He’d have every reason to turn me away if he wished.’ Jon opens his mouth to say, no, you’re wrong, but she continues, toying with the handle of her cup, ‘And you -- you weren’t some Mad Dog raping and killing. You were on the Quiet Isle. It’s tricky.’

‘I’m not good. You know that.’

‘I do know that, but I haven’t decided if you’re bad.’ Her eyes cut to Jon, quick, uncertain, and then back to Clegane. She says carefully, ‘The night the Blackwater burned. That was wrong of you.’

‘Yes it was.’

‘Should I forgive you?’

‘Your choice, I suppose.’

Sansa glances at Jon again, and he tries not to imagine what happened that night. The Blackwater lit up with wildfire, lethal, unpredictable, brilliantly green -- Stannis Baratheon had spoken of it with contempt, Melisandre with indifference, but Baratheon’s men grew sick at the mention of it. Sansa had been there as the Blackwater burned, and Clegane too, somewhere, in the fray, somewhere with Sansa, and in the flames and the fear and with Stannis at their door, he did something that requires forgiveness.

‘You could’ve hurt me that night.’

‘I did hurt you, little bird. You can invite me to all the tea parties you want. It doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt you.’

‘Not the way anyone else did.’

She reaches for him and Jon knows this is it, this is the moment Clegane snaps, and Jon will give him the taste of Valyrian steel -- but when her hand gently presses his bandages, his wounded hand that smells of medicine, Clegane just grits his teeth.

‘Not like Joff did,’ she says. ‘Or Petyr.’

‘I didn’t rape you to death.’ He rises from his chair, dangerous and much too large for her little room, and Sansa pulls her hand away fast, but she still sends Jon a wary look that, for once, he has no trouble reading. Do not attack, it says. Hold back, it says. I am still in control.

Clegane, unsteady on his bad leg, voice as terrible as the sound of steel meeting bone, tells her, ‘I don’t deserve a commendation for that.’

She stares at her teacup on the uneven table. ‘It makes no difference now. Petyr -- ’

‘Whatever that fucking Littlefinger did, he shouldn’t have done it, he shouldn’t have been allowed near you, and I hope someone slices him gut to groin very soon. I’d like the privilege of doing it myself.’ As if from a distance, Jon watches him grab Sansa by the chin, watches him force her to acknowledge him. ‘But it doesn’t mean you should forgive me.’

‘Clegane,’ Jon warns, coming back to himself, the promise of death in his voice, and Ghost advances, teeth bared, until the Hound lets go of Sansa as if she were made of flame. He looks between the two of them, and then at the door.

‘I’ll go.’

Whether he means to leave the Wall or just Sansa’s presence, Jon isn’t certain, but Sansa stands up, shaking her head. ‘Wait. Please,’ she says, reaching for Clegane’s arm, and he freezes beneath her fingers. ‘Why are you here, if you don’t want my forgiveness? Were you just curious what had become of that stupid little girl you once knew?’

She lifts her blue eyes up, up, into Clegane’s harrowed gaze. The ice in those eyes must burn him. ‘As you can see, your little bird has flown straight into winter. Maybe it will kill me.’

Clegane’s large frame moves closer to Sansa, so that all Jon can see of his sister now is the glow of her hair in the firelight over the man’s shoulder. ‘You’d grow tall in a damned ice storm, Sansa,’ Jon hears him say. ‘You’re of the North. You’re strong.’

He turns back to the door.

‘I’m leaving,’ she says, before he steps out of her room. ‘For my own protection. I thought I would hate it in this place, but I think I’ll actually miss it. It’s been good for me. I think it will be good for you. Everything is old here, older than the Seven and the Iron Throne and this awful game we can’t seem to escape. There is magic here.’

Jon wants wraps his arm around her shoulders, to feel her head tilting into his neck. He wants to reach out for her. But she doesn’t even see him. Her eyes are fixed on Clegane’s back, on the place where he stands with his hand on the door.

‘What can I do?’ he asks without turning around.

‘I don’t imagine you saving me anymore. Don’t worry about that. Please, all I ask is that you be loyal to my brother. Protect him. Defend the Wall.’

He makes no reply as he heaves the door open. Then there is only the muted sound of his boots taking him further and further away, his tread soft, much softer than Jon thought it could be.

When at last Sansa looks at Jon, whatever she sees in his face must be terrible, because she puts her hands to her mouth and sobs.

*

‘You never told me any of it.’

‘You never asked me, Jon. All these months you didn’t ask, and I assumed you didn’t want to know. You were afraid to know.’

‘Afraid to know what?’ he asks, a pain in his heart like it’s been hooked, pulled, dragged out of him in pieces.

She just shakes her head.

*

They ride the winch elevator to the top of the Wall together, Sansa’s cheeks flaming with color in the wind. When the Blackfish first brought her here, Jon worried about letting her up so high, but she had said, ‘I’ve been living in the Eyrie, Jon,’ in almost the same tone of voice she’d used on him when they were children at Winterfell, so now he never tries to dissuade her. Still, he worries about the way she peers out at the world on the other side of the Wall. He doesn’t know what he fears, exactly, but there are times he wants to hold her tight, weigh her down, as if she might sprout wings and fly away.

Today he does not touch her, and they stand in silence for a long time, warmed by the fire at an unmanned watchpost.

There is nothing in the distance, not a wildling, not a White Walker, not a wolf -- only the forest and the snow that has not stopped for days now, or maybe weeks, glimmering even beyond the farthest point he can see, glimmering all the way until the world ends. The beauty of it sometimes moves him, but he never forgets that the brutality of this ice land could destroy everything. Snow may be his name, but winter will always be stronger than man. All he can do is prepare for its coming, and survive its unforgiving passage.

‘It snowed when Petyr first brought me to the Vale. I built a castle.’ She pulls her cloak tighter around her shoulders. ‘I only wanted to go home. He told me he would take me home.’

‘Whatever happened -- ‘

She takes his hand, squeezing it, and even through his glove and hers he can feel the cold of her skin. ‘I want to be made of glass, I do. I want to be breakable again, the way you think I am, but I’ve already been broken. And I know how to carry on now, even in pieces.’ She lets go of him and shivers. ‘The parts of yourself that you need, you keep. Everything else gets lost along the way.’

‘But you must know -- Sansa, you must know, it doesn’t matter to me.’

‘I was -- I am -- married to a Lannister. I’ve been traded back and forth between captors for years. The Hound has kissed me and Petyr has done worse.’

‘But that doesn’t matter to me. You’re, you’re my sister.’

‘Don’t be so stupid, Jon. You are grown now, and you are a leader, and you cannot be not as blind to the world as you once were.’

Of course he’s not blind, not after Ygritte and Stannis Baratheon and Gilly’s baby, but still -- still, he thinks, he can be brave and honest for his men and for the Wall, but he doesn’t want to have to do it for her. She deserves the pretty songs she used to love. She deserves to still believe in beautiful lies.

‘What has happened to me should matter to you,’ she says, ‘because it’s no secret, and flattery and courtesy won’t make people forget. Power, perhaps, but we have little enough of that at present. If you’re going to take back Winterfell, and you are, I know you are, you can’t do it with me. No one wants the lion’s prey for their ruler.’

‘You are the heir to Winterfell,’ he protests, but the way she raises her eyebrows at him, he knows she knows that is not quite the case.

‘Robb made you his heir. Petyr told me. He made you Jon Stark and he made you Winterfell’s heir.’

‘But I said no. I will not leave the Wall; it’s my place now. Stannis Baratheon offered to help raise me up to power, true enough, but I do not want Robb’s crown or our father’s seat.’ It’s almost true now. At least the hunger is not so sharp, with Sansa before him, a queen if he ever saw one. ‘I’m a brother of the Night’s Watch, and I’m a bastard.’

‘And I am a Lannister. I will not rule Winterfell as a Lannister.’

‘Damn the Lannisters -- you are a Stark.’

Her smile shines, bright, honest. ‘You and I, Jon, in our hearts we are Starks. Now you can be one truly. But to the world I am the Imp’s wife or Littlefinger’s whore daughter.’

All he wants at this moment is Littlefinger’s neck beneath his sword, but he must remember himself. He must remember Sansa. She isn’t a child, and he cannot undo the pains she suffered all those years by pretending everything will be well. However, he will not allow Sansa to give up her birthright.

‘I cannot rule Winterfell, Sansa, but I will find a way to win it for you. I will win the people to you. It is your home. It does not belong to Petyr Baelish.’

‘You would break your oath to take no side in this war?’

‘I have broken more oaths than I can name. This one I would even do without guilt -- for you.’

She embraces him properly then, a rare embrace, her arms holding themselves tight around his body, her head resting against his chest. Her breath is warm, but her skin is cold, and he thinks she has grown too thin on the Wall’s meagre offerings. She feels so fragile in his arms, porcelain, white as snow -- and yet, he has seen her face down the Hound with all his brutality and his ugliness. He has seen her walk the Wall without fear.

‘Petyr will come for me. If word has spread that I am here, he will come.’

Jon presses his lips to the side of her face. ‘Then we will fight him.’

‘I don’t want to fight him.’ She pulls away, and he misses her instantly, longs for her already, his last piece of Winterfell, his last Stark. ‘Understand this, Jon. I will not be here when Petyr arrives.’

‘I don’t know where to send you.’

‘There is no civilized place that is not embroiled in this war. Petyr told me that even in Dorne and across the Narrow Sea, the war is felt. If I am to retake Winterfell, I must take some time. I’ll need to disappear, until things are more certain. Tyrion Lannister must die, and so must Petyr. Until then -- ’ She shakes her head, and the snow from her hood dusts her shoulders. ‘I will not be used against you. I will not be taken as a piece in the game.’

‘I understand, but I don’t know where -- ’

But he realizes that he already knows what she intends. He follows her gaze, out into the distant wild, and a furious heat flashes through him. ‘No,’ he says at once. After everything he has told her about the wildlings and the White Walkers -- after everything he told her about his time out there, and Sam’s, and how the two of them only made it back by sheer luck -- and she would propose this? ‘No.’ A girl her age who has spent her life in courts, talking prettily and singing songs, she would be dead her first day on the other side.

‘It’s out of the question.’

‘I’m not afraid of what’s beyond the Wall,’ she says.

‘Then you are foolish. I’ve seen it, and it’s more worthy of your fear than Petyr Baelish.’

Her hands tighten into fists, and whether its because of his tone or Baelish’s name, he does not know, but he can tell this will be a fight. This will be a fight and he will not lose it.

‘Wildlings, wights, they might kill me, I know that,’ Sansa says, ‘but Petyr turned me into somebody I didn’t want to be. I became another person. I was a fast learner, but I wasn’t a Stark, I wasn’t Sansa, I was Alayne Stone, his tool, his doll to make up as he pleased and do with what he liked. He pretended to be my father, but he was no father to me.’

Stone, he thinks. A bastard too.

But it makes no difference. Her broken heart does not matter. She cannot go beyond the Wall. It’s reckless to have her this far North to begin with, a place that is so full of peril even in peacetime.

‘You think I do not know the wild and the beasts, but I do. I have survived a different kind of wilderness than this one, but I know now that I can survive. You could teach me to navigate these dangers.’

Alive in Jon’s mind is Ygritte, touched by fire, killed much too young. He thinks of Craster’s wives, and the sacrificed sons, and the fierce wildlings and the terrible giants who fought at the Battle of Castle Black. He thinks of the men lost when the White Walkers attacked, the battle he never saw that nonetheless comes to him in dreams as vivid as memories. He can picture Sansa, throat sliced, all red and white, her auburn hair shining like a pool of blood. Worse, he sees her as she is not, a terrible darkness inside her corpse, making her move and kill and look at Jon with eyes that are not Tully blue, not at all.

‘No,’ he says, taking her by the elbow, pushing her toward the elevator that will carry them down again, back into the heart of Castle Black. ‘I’ll think of something else, another way to help you, because this is not an answer.’

*

Trouble is, there are no answers.

He knew it all along, of course, that one day he would have to give her up, as he has been made to give up everything else that is not of the Watch. Sweet though it is to call her sister, he has a new family now. If Littlefinger comes for her, Jon would be willing to fight, but he can’t ask his men to do the same -- he can’t ask them to join another war, not with one already knocking at the Wall, not when these men may have sisters themselves, family they still love allied along lines he cannot predict. He will not let Sansa be sacrificed to the war, but he cannot betray his brothers either.

There is nowhere for her to go, and the battles he must fight on her behalf -- and he will fight for her rule, that much he swears -- cannot be fought at the Wall. But he cannot send her North.

He dreams, some nights, of Winterfell’s godswood. In the bleeding eyes of the weirwood trees, he finds all the knowledge of his father, the secret to every question that rises through Jon’s spirit like a gasp for air. In that godswood, and only that godswood, Jon has no fear: he knows how to defeat the White Walkers, he knows how to protect Sansa. He knows who his mother is. This legacy of understanding, it is his father’s last gift to him.

When he wakes, he recalls that strange solid feeling of certainty, the warmth of living without doubt. He remembers these dreams as he remembers Arya, his brothers, his father, Ygritte -- they are so good and so right that he wonders if they ever existed at all.

But there are never any solutions once he wakens, and he doesn’t know how to face Sansa. How can he prevent her running from the people who spent years trying to kill her from the inside out? Yet -- how could he let her flee to the land where White Walkers roam and the cold changes you down to your bones? All he wants is to hold her and vow never to let her go, but the truth is, that’s dangerous too, so instead he sends Ghost to keep her company, and to keep her safe, and he throws himself into training the recruits. The time has almost come for them to take the oath, and Jon needs them to understand precisely what it means to wear black.

The men are unskilled but eager to learn; they do not snicker at his lectures on the horrors that will soon be upon them, and in the training yard, they mimic his posture and his grip, studying his thrusts and parries with a seriousness uncharacteristic for a gang of thieves and rapers new to the Wall. Perhaps they feel the encroaching darkness too.

Clegane makes quick work of them all, even Jon, and the sight of his panting grin puts the fear of the gods into most of the men. It’s as if he was born with a sword in his hand and a lust to kill. But after training ends, he leans against the armory wall, rubbing his thigh, face closed with pain.

‘You might see the Maester,’ Jon says.

‘No need,’ Clegane replies, pushing himself up to standing. He turns his head halfway toward Jon. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine,’ Jon lies.

Clegane grunts and limps away, leaving drag marks in the snow beside the crisp print of his boot.

*

Sansa has evidently gone through every sheaf and scrap of paper on his desk by the time he returns to his quarters to find her sitting in his chair. All of his maps are in a messy stack by Sansa’s elbow. Immediately Ghost bounds to her side, huge mouth opening into a canine grin, and he noses her thigh happily until she scratches his ears. ‘Traitor,’ Jon sighs, but is glad of Sansa’s soft smile. She cannot be too angry with him, then.

‘Sam let you in, I suppose. What was I thinking, giving him keys to every room in the keep?’

‘He’s a much kinder crow than some I might name. What exactly are you hoping to do -- ignore me and pray that the rest of the kingdom will too? As plans go, it’s not my favorite.’

‘As opposed to the one where you’re killed beyond the Wall by freezing or wildlings or worse, with no one to protect you and no one to even send me word that you’ve died.’

‘Of course not. That’s an awful plan, Jon. I’m talking about the one where I survive beyond the Wall because you’ve taught me to protect myself.’

He scrubs at his face. Maybe she thinks if he gave her a sword, the way he gave Arya a sword, she would be able to strike down everything that threatened her. Maybe she thinks that if she’d had a sword all along, she could’ve cut Petyr Baelish’s throat before he ever even thought to touch her. But swords are not magic, and even the finest blade cannot protect you from starvation or the bitter cold, or from a horde of wildlings, or from a White Walker. It will not protect her from the kingdom’s gossip, either.

‘I am not as useless as you think me.’

‘I don’t think you useless. The cloak you stitched for me is the finest and warmest I’ve ever had. And you have been a great help to Sam when he needs another set of hands, he’s told me so.’ Sam said she’d once sewn up a great gash one of the rangers came back with after a tumble beyond the Wall, sewn up his skin like it was fine silk, her hands steady even as the blood flowed. The girl he’d known once upon a time -- could this really be her? Of course she is not useless. And yet. ‘On your own, you would not survive out there, not for long. On my own I couldn’t swear that I’d survive -- truly. Many men of the Night’s Watch, grown men, went out with their brothers and, even with trained men at their side, they did not come back.’

‘So you expect me to wait for Petyr to come and collect me?’ It’s all but a gasp -- desperate and furious. She’s standing now, and it takes her a moment to settle her hands at her sides, to calm her breath, but it’s a facade, a mask of ease, and it’s crueller, sharper, than her anger would be. ‘I know you cannot really fight him, not without starting another war. And I suppose you think he must not be so bad, not compared to a lion landing at the Wall.’

‘That’s not fair -- ‘

‘He’s only Littlefinger, after all. He is fond of me. He has said that he loves me. Would it really be so terrible for him to take me away again?’

‘Of course it would.’ He reaches for her, for her white cheek or the copper hairs come loose from her braid, but he thinks of Baelish’s hands on her and hesitates before his fingers meet her skin. ‘The man deserves death,’ he says.

‘But you cannot kill him. And I will not.’

‘Sansa -- ’

‘I have looked on death too many times to take pleasure in it. I watched Joffrey die. I hated him, and I deserved to feel joy when I watched him die. I should have felt avenged. But it was awful. It was just . . . awful. And Aunt Lysa . . . ’

He sees it then: the spasm of furious misery hidden behind her beauty and her grace and her coldness. Pain beyond grief, beyond mourning. Pain like a knife she twists inside of herself on purpose, to remind her of the one who first plunged it into her heart. How did he never see it before?

‘I think,’ she says, ‘if Petyr would just leave me be, I could forgive him. I could at least try to forget. But I’m afraid he’ll always come -- it’s some idea he’s got in his head now. He’ll have Winterfell, he’ll have the crown if he can pry it from the Lannisters, and he’ll have me. That’s what he needs to have played a winning game.’

She takes hold of his wrist, squeezing it tight and then more gently, almost a question, and, unafraid to touch her now, he moves closer and finds the small curve of her shoulder with his free hand. The bone beneath his fingers is thin and hard, like a little blade itself. Inside of her there might be a creature of edges and angles, a cutting beast, vicious and able to defend itself -- inside of her there might be someone strong enough or broken enough to kill -- but Jon has seen the secret heart of Sansa, as she kneeled in the godswood and prayed for those she has lost, and, after, when she took his hand and called him her brother, he felt the power of her love. If he gave her a dagger and let her loose at her enemies, she could fight, she could try to land those fatal blows, he does not doubt that she has it in her, but she’s right: the blood would offer her no relief. There has to be another way.

She must survive this, survive as herself, until she can rule.

But of course, that’s what she’s been doing all along. King’s Landing, her marriage, even Littlefinger, she has survived. She has got the hang of it.

Perhaps the best he can do now is trust that she knows how to save herself.

‘If you were to go North,’ Jon says, holding her at arm’s length, far enough for him to get his thoughts straight. ‘If you did go, you couldn’t go alone, not with you so unfamiliar to the territory. You’d need a ranger with you. I could spare one man and some rations.’

Sansa’s eyes widen. ‘But you’d need him if the White Walkers -- ’

‘Then he’d be another man keeping watch on the other side. If he saw any sign of the Others, he’d be under orders to return to Castle Black, and you with him.’

It’s still a terrible idea, but what other ideas are there in such terrible times? Winter has come, and choices must be made. He might lose her either way, but if this is what she wants, if this is how she thinks she can survive, then all he can do is ensure that he has done everything he can to help her.

‘It would only be for a little while, Jon. Petyr will come soon, I have no doubt of it, and then word will travel to the Lannisters that I’m not here anymore. They wouldn’t want to make the journey for nothing. Then I can come back,’ she says, sounding eager and surprisingly young, ‘and it can be as it was before.’

No, it can’t. Before, they had no plans, no hopes, no vision beyond her survival. Now, there is Winterfell to be won. He has declared war, and as soon as Littlefinger and the Lannisters learn he was hiding her, he will be made to pay. He will be made to fight. But he nods anyway, because there is no sin in hope.

He says, ‘Ghost will go with you.’

More than anything, more even than the prospect of Petyr Baelish, this seems to shake her. She stumbles away from the wolf sitting at her feet as if she’s afraid of him, as if he could ever hurt her. ‘No. No. You you need Ghost. Ghost is yours. I cannot take him from you.’

He’s lost his family, he must lose Sansa -- and to lose Ghost will be to lose a limb, but he believes that Ghost will bring her back to him. Through Ghost, Jon can know that Sansa is safe. Through Ghost, Jon can protect her himself.

‘If Ghost is with you,’ he explains, ‘it will be like having me there. Ghost will take care of you as well as I could. Better, even.’

Still pale and frowning, she asks, ‘And the ranger?’

But she meets his eyes and the answer is obvious, so obvious that she gasps, ‘I told him he was free of me. I told him he owes me nothing. You can’t ask this of him now.’

‘He will do it.’

The way Clegane looked at Sansa -- there is no doubt he will do it. To him she is not just a beautiful woman, as she is to the other men of the Watch. To him she is a ghost. She haunts him. He -- yes, that’s it. He fears her.

‘He’s strong enough to protect you,’ Jon says, and thinks, he’s strong enough to hurt her too. But who isn’t? Who wouldn’t hurt her, in this band of men who haven’t seen a woman in months, years? Who wouldn’t, when Jon is asking them to risk their lives for no reason other than that he loves his sister, when it has nothing to do, nothing at all, with holding the Wall or defending the realm?

But a dog is loyal. A dog takes orders. A dog will die for its master.

And if he lays one finger on Sansa, Ghost will take his head off.

‘You shouldn’t ask him to do this,’ Sansa says.

But when Jon asks ‘Who would you prefer, then?’ she doesn’t say anything. She just twists her hair around her fingers and casts her blue eyes back over the maps she’d been studying, maps of what lies beyond the Wall.

*

Clegane says yes.

‘Understand, Clegane, you’ll be doing this as a brother of the Night’s Watch. Once you take the oath, you are bound to do as I command, and I will command you to protect her by all means necessary, even to die for her. Know that this is not King’s Landing. This is not the Kingsguard. There will be no rewards, no gold or honors or glory. Protect her because it’s an order. Because I have deemed it necessary.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘You may face wildlings and you may face White Walkers, though I will pray to the gods old and new that you do not. Even without those dangers, you will contend with cold and hunger and long dark days. And make no mistake, you will protect her from yourself or I will have your head.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Clegane says again, gripping his sword, already prepared for battle. This man, Jon thinks, knows nothing but fighting and killing, nothing but blood -- but he is alive, he is somehow still alive, and maybe his killing hands will keep Sansa alive too.

*

A raven comes late in the night warning that Petyr Baelish is almost upon them. He has ridden a long way North, it seems, and has stopped in Mole’s Town for the night. ‘Josephine,’ Sam says, ‘she’s the, uh -- she’s Hardwicke’s friend, the one he -- ’ Sam blushes.

She is the whore whose belly has grown big with his baby, and whose protection Jon has guaranteed in return for her spying eyes. She has been useful, never more so than now. There are as many enemies below the Wall as above it, and Jon would be remiss in his leadership not to watch for them too.

‘What does she say, Sam?’

‘She writes that a man’s come to see about buying all the brothels in town. Lord Baelish, she calls him. He’s the one you talked about.’

‘Yes.’

The brothels, Jon thinks. Just a ruse to ride North or a way to stake a claim? Or, perhaps, a vantage point from which to punish Jon and the Night’s Watch for enabling Sansa’s escape. If Jon has learned anything from the little Sansa has told him, it is that Petyr Baelish can play the long game: he does nothing without a reason, even if no one but Baelish knows what that reason might be.

Jon says, ‘You must go now. Take Ghost. Wake Sansa. Tell her to gather her things and we will meet her down below in half an hour’s time. And bring down Clegane’s damned horse.’

‘But where are you going?’

Fastening his cloak and pulling open his chamber door, Jon says, ‘Clegane has not said the words yet. I will have him protect her as a man of the Night’s Watch, not as the Lannister’s loose dog.’ He hurries away.

Clegane’s cell is in Hardin’s Tower, and he throws his door open on Jon’s second thudding knock, his face barely visible but for the eerie orange light of Jon’s torch. ‘It’s time,’ Clegane says, not quite asking, and at Jon’s nod, he disappears back into his cell. He emerges again with his pack of provisions.

‘The little bird?’

‘Maester Samwell is collecting her. She’ll meet us after you’ve taken your oath. We must get to the sept.’

His mouth twists, but he doesn’t stop walking. ‘Why would you waste -- ?’

‘Clegane. I will send another man. I told you.’

‘Yes, yes, I must be a crow before you trust me with her.’

‘I will never trust you with her. Not with all I know, and everything you’ve done. But Sansa tells me you are loath to swear to things you do not mean, so I will have you swear to this and pray it makes you a better man than you are.’

Jon stops before the Sept. ‘You keep the Seven, do you not?’

‘I keep no gods,’ Clegane says, entering, ‘but the Seven will do as good as any.’

The sept is a sad, small thing, nothing to the weirwoods in the forest that Jon swore by all those years ago. There is no flicker of magic in here: the carved faces are crude, worn down by age, with cracks in the woodwork and flat eyes that see nothing. But his men must find some comfort in those blind eyes, for there are wax lumps of melted candles at every altar -- save one. After all, no man who has taken the black would invoke the Stranger; it is the fiercest and falsest hope they share, that the Stranger will never look their way.

‘Let’s get on with it, then,’ Clegane says. He frowns at the Warrior, and then at the Father, but in the end he kneels before the Mother, one hand bracing his bad leg. After a deep breath, he begins, ‘Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end -- ’

Clegane lurches upright and Jon spins, fast, a spot of dark color and soft movement in the corner of his eye as he reaches for Longclaw. But it is only Sansa. Her hood is pulled up so that her face is circled by a thick ring of black fur, and for a moment she is half-wild, half-beast, all of her beauty glinting out from the skin of an animal. She looks ready to run as fast and as far as her legs will take her. She looks ready to tear someone apart.

‘I’m sorry.’ She clasps her gloved hands in front of her, twisting her wrists so they touch -- an awkward, anxious, human gesture, and, with it, the creature inside of her withdraws.

Jon shakes his head and, when he finds his voice again, he says, ‘I told Sam you should wait.’

‘But I wanted to watch.’ She extracts a few candles, already burned down to half-size, from her pockets. ‘And to pray.’

Clegane snorts, before easing back down onto his knees. ‘Must be the first time a woman’s been present for this.’

‘I’d imagine so.’

This time, Clegane finishes the oath without interruption. He does well. The words run easily out of his mouth, familiar, like he’s been tasting them for a long while, and when he stands his shoulders have a different set to them. Jon prays once more that he will do what Jon could not: hold true to his oath.

Jon shakes Clegane’s hand -- his new brother, he tells himself, looking upon Clegane’s scars. This man will die for Sansa, if he has to. He doesn’t doubt it.

He says, ‘It’s time.’

‘Right. We best get going.’ Clegane turns to Sansa, who stood silent through the whole proceeding, holding her candles tight in her fists. ‘Say your prayers or don’t, but be quick about it.’

She lays the first candle before the Maiden, lighting it with Jon’s torch. She lights another one for the Mother, pausing to mouth a prayer that Jon cannot quite hear, though he does sense when her voice catches, when her chin trembles. This was the faith of Sansa’s mother, Jon remembers. This was how Catelyn Stark prayed. Quickly, Sansa lights candles for the Warrior and for the Father, for the Smith and for the Crone, calling on these new gods to guide them, to keep them safe, and soon the whole sept glows yellow, shadows flickering through the hollow cavities of the carved faces, so that they all seem to come alive all at once. These are not Jon’s gods, but in this moment they warm him and disquiet him. In this moment, they are listening.

After a moment of hesitation, Sansa sets a candle before the skeletal carving of the Stranger and brings her flame to the wick.

‘He is a wanderer,’ she explains to Sandor Clegane, who favors her with something like a true smile. She leans closer to the heat of the flame, shadows dancing up her neck, and then steps away again. ‘Like us.’

They follow her out of the sept, Clegane with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword and another patting the dragonglass dagger strapped to his belt, Jon watching how Sansa’s feet grow more sure with each step, when all he wants is to pull her back to him. When all he wants is to never let her go.

In the snow outside, Ghost has been waiting, silent as always and still as death. His eyes, eyes of blood, eyes of the old gods and the weirwoods, lock on to Jon’s, and know his heart. It will break him to let them go, but he must, he must, and Ghost will ensure it. Ghost will do what Jon knows, in some unspoken and unspeakable way, must be done.

The wolf climbs to his feet and, brushing past Jon in his sorrow, past Clegane with his shoulders already tensed for action, Ghost takes his place at Sansa’s side, his white tail flicking back and forth behind him. Even as they leave the tunnel beneath the Wall and approach the forest, the trees just shimmering columns in the night, pale as the candles in the sept, Ghost doesn’t move from his post beside Sansa, his nose raised high to catch all the dying scents in the bleak winter air. You are hers, for as long as she needs. You are hers until she is safe. Ghost doesn’t look back at Jon, and Jon doesn’t say goodbye.