"How is he?"

"The fever has come down."

"Silly boy. Why did he not say anything about falling and hurting himself?"

"He does not want us finding out that it happened while he was trying to make Proudwing fly again, I expect."

"Uncle Harbert was right. That bird is damaged. It will never fly again, no matter how hard Stannis tries to train it, no matter how much he wills it."

"Try telling your son that. You know how stubborn he can be. In any case, you were the one who encouraged him, who told him not to give up."

"We'll find him another goshawk. Or a gyrfalcon, like Robert's Thunderclap."

"It will not be the same as the bird he found and nursed back to health himself."

"It will have to do."

"And how did you find the king, husband?"

"Worse and worse. I fear –"

"Father?"

His father's hand was on his forehead; warm, capable, living.

"She flew," Stannis said. "Proudwing flew. Only as high as the treetops, true, but she flew. She did!" Stannis opened his eyes, but it was not his father's face hovering over him.

"Proudwing was your bird, I expect?" Rickard Stark asked. There were dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes.

Stannis finally remembered where he was. No no no no!

"It is what it is, lad. No use pretending otherwise," Great Uncle Harbert would have said.

"Try another bird. This one is not worth all that hard work," Great Uncle Harbert had told Stannis.

"This king is not worth all your loyalty," Great Uncle Harbert had told Stannis' father, when Steffon Baratheon was summoned to court to serve in the small council.

"This king is not worth the lives of my nephew and his lady wife," Great Uncle Harbert had told the sons of Steffon Baratheon, after they were orphaned.

"This king is not worth your strict, unwavering adherence to duty," Rickard Stark had warned Stannis.

"Proudwing was my goshawk," Stannis replied.

Rickard nodded. "Brandon had a goshawk," he began, his voice hoarse and weary, infinitely weary, his eyes gazing off into the distance. "Brandon called her the Wandering Wolf. He was very proud of that bird. 'It is not a wolf, son,' I told him once, in jest. Brandon laughed. 'Father, you have no imagination,' he said. "See, she's howling to the moon, calling out for her pack.' Brandon has a lively imagination, like your little brother Renly."

Had, Stannis thought. Brandon had, not has. He had made the same mistake talking about his mother and father, for many moons after their death. The dead no longer had the right for the present, or the future for that matter, only the past. That applied to words as much as it did to anything else.

"Did Brandon name his goshawk after his lady mother's father?"

Rickard looked up in surprise. "So you know about Rodrik Stark."

"Your good-father."

"And my grandfather's youngest brother. Lyarra was my cousin." His voice caught, saying the name of his lady wife. When he spoke again, it was not Stannis he was addressing. "Our boy, Lyarra. Our Brandon." He wept, then, Lord Stark of Winterfell, grieving father, a widower for many years standing, stuck in a dark, dank dungeon with only the good-son he never entirely trusted as company.

Stannis looked away. He stayed still, very still.

"I have embarrassed you," Rickard said, when the tears finally ceased flowing.

"No. But my father once said a man must be allowed to grieve in peace, to shed his tears without the whole world hovering over him."

"Did you weep, when you lost your father and mother?"

"What happened to Brandon's Wandering Wolf?" Stannis asked, ignoring Rickard's question.

"One day, not long after Brandon's thirteenth nameday, she flew away and never returned. Brandon was not distraught, to my surprise. 'She has gone on a great adventure, Father. Not for the likes of her, this calm, tame life,' Brandon told me. 'She has the wolf-blood in her, my Wandering Wolf.' Brandon has it too, the touch of the wolf-blood. Lyanna as well."

"You are all wolves, the Starks," Stannis said, uncomprehending.

"They were restless, the both of them. Never could stay still, as far back as when they were in their mother's womb. Always looking for something, searching for god knows what. Like my father, Lyarra used to say."

"She was looking to make her own choices," Stannis said.

"Who?"

I would have paid the price willingly, Lyanna had told her husband, if I knew it was the result of my own folly, and not the folly of others. But I forgot to account for the price other people would have to pay, for my folly.

You remembered. You remembered in time, and that stayed your hand.

Did she know, about her brother? Had she been told? Had she even been told the same lie about her father's fate, as Brandon was? The thought of her pain was more wrenching than the burns in his arms.

You will survive this. You will live through it. I did, he promised her, in his head.

But where was the comfort in that? There was surviving, and then there was actually living that was more than just the act of still drawing breath.

"I have always wondered, you know. What would have happened if your lord father had been made Hand of the King, as Aerys planned," Rickard Stark suddenly said.

Stannis thought he had misheard at first, intent as he was on the thought of his wife. Or had grief so confused and overwhelmed his good-father? "My father was made Master of Laws, not Hand of the King, when His Grace summoned him to court," Stannis pointed out, not unkindly.

Rickard stared at Stannis, incredulous. "You mean to tell me you never knew?"

"Knew what, my lord?"

"He never said a word, your father?"

"About what?"

"What did he tell you, before he sailed to Volantis with your lady mother?"

"That the king has entrusted him with an important mission across the Narrow Sea, to find a bride with the blood of Old Valyria for Prince Rhaegar."

"And that was all?"

Stannis nodded.

"Did you truly never wonder, why your father was the one entrusted with that task? Not Aerys' lord Hand at the time, say. Not Tywin Lannister himself."

Stannis frowned. "My father was His Grace's own cousin. And Lord Tywin would have been preoccupied with his duties as Hand. It did not seem such a strange notion, to send my father."

Rickard laughed. The sound was jarring in that confined space. "That was exactly what your father told Lord Arryn, before he departed. 'There are always rumors, Jon. Only fools pay any heed to foolish words, and we are not fools, you and I,' he said."

Oh those words! His father's words, Stannis recognized them at once. Steffon Baratheon had said them to his sons often enough, although the phrasing was slightly different. Only fools pay any heed to foolish words, and I have not been raising fools, I sincerely hope.

What else do you know, Lord Stark? What else do you know about my father? Stannis hungered to ask."What rumors?" He asked instead.

"I have almost forgotten," Rickard said, "how well and truly Steffon Baratheon kept his sons away from court."

"Robert spent some time in court, after he became Lord of Storm's End," Stannis disagreed.

"That was after your father's death. How often did your father take you to court, when you and Robert were boys? Why were neither of you sent to court to serve as a royal page or a royal squire, when you are related to the king by blood? "

"My father thought it craven, to seek favors from the king just because we are related by blood," Stannis replied.

"Your lord father was sent to court to serve as a royal page, and then a royal squire. His own father – your grandfather – did not think it craven to seek a position for his son in court."

"That was different!" Stannis exclaimed. "King Aegon was my father's Targaryen grandsire. He was the one who commanded that my father be sent to court."

"Your father knew what his cousin was, the kind of man his cousin had turned into. That was why he strove to keep his sons away from court, to protect you from the king. And yet he refused to join us in our plan, to protect the entire realm from Aerys' madness. How selfish was that? How self-centered was he being? Was he not being craven in his own way?"

Stannis' hand closed on Rickard Stark's throat. For a moment, he forgot everything – forgot that this man was his good-father, forgot that this man had cradled Stannis' head in his arms when the fever was at its height, when he was mumbling incoherent words about the distant past, like his own father used to do when he was ill as a boy. He remembered only the ugly words, the lies Rickard Stark had spoken about his father. "How dare you? You know nothing about my father," Stannis shouted.

My father, Stannis. That is my father. Tell me this is not your doing. Lyanna's voice in his head brought him back to his senses. He released his hold on her father's throat, brought his hand down to his sides, his nails digging at his own flesh instead of her father's.

Coughing and spluttering, Rickard asked, "And how well do you know your own father, Stannis?"

"I know that he was not craven. I know that, if nothing else. I know that he believed His Grace was not beyond the pale … that something could still be done. I know he believed it was his duty to try, for the realm's sake. If he refused to join in whatever schemes you were planning, it was because he did not wish to see the realm bleeds."

"And do you still believe that the king is not beyond the pale?"

"My father did not see what I saw in that throne room. He could not have known. And if he had lived - "

"If he had lived?"

Only a fool would refuse to see the truth, when it is staring them right in the face.

Stannis closed his eyes. Father, I do not want to see it.

You must, my son. You of all people, Stannis.

"Your father failed in his mission. He did not find a bride for Rhaegar," Rickard Stark said. "What do you think the king would have done, if that storm had not robbed your father of his life?"

He knew the answer, didn't he? He had smelled the burning flesh in the throne room after all, had heard Brandon Stark's endless screams.

He sent the message to Lyanna.