A/N What's this? A new chapter in Mi'lord not My Lord? I cannot promise anything about updating but I promise that it will be a shorter length of time. I am very very sorry about how long this has taken and I hope you enjoy it anyway. Thank you for your patience. :)

The early morning Catelyn Stark left the safety of her son's camp, she hoped it was in some way different. She wished that she was, in fact, riding north and not south. She wished that the sky was not so red. She wished that she was riding with all her men, and her son by her side. She wished she was in some other place where her husband was waiting for her in the south, like he was that time before.

She sighed and clasped her gloved hands tightly around the leather reigns, glancing towards where Dacey Mormont and her few men were mounting their horses in boiled leather jerkins and riding cloaks. Very little armour, but then they were not planning to ride into battle - they were planning to ride south, and quickly. Yes, they were planning to be riding so quickly southwards that no one would be able to dare aim at them. Banner less except for the clasps on their cloaks and the sigils embossed into their leathers.

Banner less. Three women riding south with four men and no banners.

"Good luck mother." Robb stood beside his mother's horse, looking up at her with eyes that seemed to plead with her - as if he was already wondering against the idea in his mind. There had to be another way, but with how disenchanted the men seemed to be getting with the idea of war - this seemed to be the best way to end it. With such a large loss already - it just felt like the right idea. The right idea to stop all of the problems, at least for the most part.

Catelyn looked down at her son's woeful expression and felt something stir in the bit of her stomach, that same feeling she always felt when she saw her son - her man-grown son - look up at her like that. Worry, parental need to stop him pulling that face, something that she couldn't explain with enough words other than it was parental. Like her need to ride south. "Stay safe Robb." She tried to smile down at her son before Dacey called out for them to ride off - and within moments they were out of sight of Robb and any of the lords who stood beside him.

When the worrying feeling had not stemmed from Robb's mind a few hours later in that day, he called Smalljon Umber to speak with them, his command simple. "Follow them, Jon." The Smalljon nodded, as if understanding completely where his King was coming from - as if the thought had passed through his mind when thinking of his own mother and sisters, and the protection he would wish on them. "If you catch up to them, join them."

"What's wrong, your grace?" Smalljon looked at his king with a worried gaze as the young man before him stood, his hands seeming to shake as he looked down at the map before him. The King of the North quickly decided he should probably take a rest from looking at the map and over plans - he just needed to sort out one last thing.

"I feel off about something." Robb looked the taller man in the eye, his voice seeming sketchy as the thought behind the command. But the loyal Umber man would follow his King's command anyway.

"Of course your grace." The Smalljon bowed, his height only dipping slightly below the height of his King. "Shall I take anyone else."

"No…" He paused for a moment, rethinking that approach and the wide eyes the older man had faced him with "Three or four of your own men." Robb's voice suddenly became sterner, as if he had finally decided on the thoughts of his orders. "If anything happens to them, send a raven and stay close to them."

"Of course your grace." Smalljon Umber bowed once more and then turned promptly and left the tent, alone - and without another word. His thoughts dealing over what his King had told him - yes, there was something that felt off about the journey, but he put that down more to a protective need from his King rather then the actually feeling of something been off. But he would follow his command anyway, because the man was his King and it was not a murderous or problematic wish.

As the sun rose over King's Landing, it did not rise for one man. For that man was found dead, hanging from an open courtyard window with a red stream flowering from his throat and over his golden and red enamelled armour like red roses for a young mans tourney favours.

But the curdling metallic smell and pale, alabaster face showed no youthful physique but only a dead man's corpse.

A dead man who was once named by a girl to a man only on the night before. Who had last heard the words "A girl spoke your name." spoken over his body as he left Lord Tywin's quarters late the night.

Who had not noticed the man in red and gold armour following him until it was too late. Until it was too late for the man to ever say a word against him as the red liquid bubbled from the deep cut as his final words clogged his throat with gasps. Perhaps he had wished for a man to know that he was just following orders, doing what he was meant to do. Perhaps he wished to say something for the man to remember him by, something poignant or vengeful or - nothing the assassin would remember the next day.

How the body was left so carelessly astounded the experienced knights whilst the unseasoned lords, ladies and green boys all seemed to be sickened at the sight of the body - and the blood.

The red stones seemed to struggle against the weight of the man's thickened blood, the stains seeming to bubble in the red sandstone as if they would take a long year to disappear from the once clean stones of the Red Keep.

With the body removed quite quickly in the morning, the just arrived solders had gone about been questioned - most of them stating that if they were going to do it they wouldn't have done it then, since they had plenty of time in actual battlefields to do that.

But the questions ended as soon as they had begun, for the true culprit would be difficult to find.

The sun rose twice as fast over the little lady in her chambers. She had managed to escape to her room after telling Jaqen the name and quickly hid with Nymeria in her rooms. But she awoke to find own blood flowering onto the gold and red sheets below her as her voice bubbled through the rooms to the boy on the opposite end of the corridor. "Gendry…" At that, almost instantly, the boy entered the rooms and found his friend sitting there, the sheets pulled back and the metallic smell of blood curdling in the air. "Why is there blood?" Her voice was shaking and so were her hands holding the sheets, her eyes were fixed on her friends face with big grey eyes wide.

"Fuck." Gendry knew his voice had come out in a confused shout and he rushed to his friend's side as he heard her words, wishing to comfort her in some way. "I… I don't know." His voice was still louder than he expected, his words shaking as her's were and were just as confused - but he pushed his panic to the back of his mind to concentrate on hers. "Are you in any pain?" He managed to calm his voice enough to make his words come out, unaffected by the panic in his body.

But then a brown haired girl poked her head around the corner, Arya's ladies-maid, a girl called Jeyne. "Is everything alright my lord?" Her voice seemed to calm him a little, but Arya it did not. She was still shaking with confusion and panic. And she was looking at the girl with the same large grey eyes she had looked at with Gendry - her tension not releasing.

"erm…" The blacksmith boy looked at the girl in the doorway with the same worry, his voice suddenly quieter than it had been before - almost as if he was suddenly whispering. "I don't know…" He looked towards Arya's face once more and down at the bed clothes, a darker red on white, red and gold

"Oh my lady…" Jeyne saw how the sheets were pulled back and sighed. The girl was only a few years older than Arya at sixteen, but she was much more caring and understanding than what Arya had expected from a girl in Lannister employ. "It's okay, it's nothing to worry about."

"I'm not meant to bleed." Arya insisted, her eyes fixed on the girl before her and her soft, calm features. "I bleed when I get hurt..." She moved her hands, shaking still, to hover at the wound at her side - flinching at the thought of the wound there. "I can't be okay, blood isn't meant to be black." She insisted, her panic seeming not to ebb away as she started to shake once again, the sheets seeming to hiss in the speed on her movements.

"My lady, did your mother or you septa never tell you about what happened when you flowered?" Jeyne sat down beside Arya, her hands folded in her lap and her simple dress raised only slightly at her ankle. She seemed so calm beside Arya and slowly this feeling moved over towards her as she thought over conversations she could have had with her mother and septa over those sorts of things.

"Yes… but I don't think I was listening." Arya admitted, bunching her hands once more into the sheets and staring down at where they were covering the blood. Her thoughts lingering on what it would mean over what would happen.

"Can I help, mi'ladies?" Gendry asked, a small smile on his lips as he could see Arya calming and Jeyne helping her to understand.

"Not really my lord." Jeyne smiled at the young bull who would have objected to her calling him that if he wasn't so concentrated on Arya's face.

"There has to be some way I can help." He felt himself insist, almost ignoring the words the girl had said, even though he knew that she would obviously know better than he on the matter.

"Gendry, if you ask to help me again I will run Needle through you." Arya glared and Gendry let out a shocked laugh, at least she was returning to her old self - he thought to himself.

"My lord, go and inform Lord Tywin of the fact, please." Jeyne requested as she began to explain what was happening to Arya, what it all meant and so on and so on. So as he heard the first mention of flowers he quickly fled the room to do as Jeyne had requested. Because then at least he could be helpful, hopefully.

Across the keep, surrounded by the smell of bacon and breakfast filling the room that the Hand of the King and his daughter sat in. Lord Tywin was enjoying the bacon and bread which remained on his plate whilst his daughter drank a goblet of water and nursed her own plate of brown bread, eggs and bacon.

She was not meeting her father's eyes and the man knew she was irritated, ever since she had sent back his men with the reply about her invite to breaking her fast with him. And he was sure he knew why, for she had concentrated so much on the subject ever since he arrived in the capital. "The two of them have too much freedom." The two she meant been the two wards he had brought with him, as she had expressed her irritation whenever she got the chance to him - along with her irritation of the many other issues she had with the rules he was enforcing. "You give them too much freedom."

"The two of them have been on the King's Road for the past year." Tywin stated, he barely thought they had much freedom - they could barely leave their rooms and when they did it was to somewhere else in the keep and they were followed by guards. His daughter was just playing up at their presence. "He poses no threat to us." He glanced out of the window towards where the window of their rooms were, any other person may have wondered what was going on with them - but he had no care, because they barely ever did anything of significance.

"She is reliant on him and he is her." Cersei remarked at something Tywin already knew well, her thoughts run ragged at the idea. The idea that a girl that looked so like the dead woman that meant her husband could not love her and a boy that looked so like her dead husband hurt her - for they were what she could not have had.

"Then you have no need to worry." Tywin stated, not paying much attention to how his daughter seemed so angered by the prospect.

"She will kill us." She tried to reason with him, hoping that her father would see the reasoning behind it all. She had to be right because she was so sure of it in her mind - the girl had survived off her own hate for Joffrey and herself and she knew that the girl had the sword, Varys told her as much.

"She will not be able to get close enough." Tywin said nonchalantly, taking a long sip of his morning water flavoured with lemons. "She did not try to kill me when she was my cupbearer, she had ample chance then."

"She will want revenge for her father." Cersei narrowed her eyes at her father, who seemed so adamant on his plans to see her way of thinking.

"Killing Stark was a mistake." Tywin said the words that carried such truth with determination and a understanding that he understood more than his daughter ever could. Because he had seen the determination the death of Stark had caused in the Stark men and those sworn to them. "We should not give her more of a reason to enact revenge on us." He knew his daughter would not understand, but he had little care.

"She's a young girl." His daughter spat out, rolling the goblet between her hands. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"She's a young girl who has seen this war first hand." Like many, he remarked in his mind. Not that he cared for that, it strengthened many and showed horrors to more - all of which did not effect him and so did not matter to him. "She is less of a girl than her sister."

"Well that's easy enough." Cersei scoffed and took a drink of her water, rolling the goblet in her hands and smirking to herself. Sansa Stark was truly a pitiful case in her eyes - with little strength in her eyes, as pitiful as the day she'd first seen her in Winterfell.

"Ser Meryn beat her on Joffery's orders, did he not?" He asked his question, his eyebrow raised into a acute point, as acute and pointed as his question was.

"I was not there." Cersei dismissed the thought, but not for what it was. For the fact that she did not want to think of it - because even if she knew of it, it was not something a King did, let alone her Joff.

"But you know of it." Tywin said, unblinking. "Joffery had the same done to the girl." His words were still as pointed, his daughter had to know. His daughter had to know what her son had done. She was queen regent now and the people, from the small folk to the court, expected her to take responsibility for her son's actions as they did for him as the King's Hand.

"He loves her." Tywin simply raised his eyebrow, unsure of what his daughter's point was. "The boy." She seemed to need to clarify who she meant, even though Tywin was already aware. He had only thought it useless to respond or even care.

"They're too young." He dismissed the claim, they would not know what to love and to loose truly was until they were much older. "But yet… They've seen much worse than love out there." He'd seen what they had seen, love was something that hadn't ever sprung to mind with it.

"I don't believe this. You sympathise with them." His daughter chuckled in almost surprise, as if she was shocked that her father - Tywin Lannister, the man who had ruthlessly returned House Lannister to greatness - was showing some sort of care and emotion. The type of care and emotion she'd never seen him show her.

"No." He denied whatever his daughter thought she saw, care was not a thing that passed through Lord Tywin Lannister when he saw those children. "I understand them." They were pieces on the board and would not be lost through sheer idiocy, even though some wished that to be so.

"She looks like her." Cersei bit out her words with bitter resolve. It was a statement that many already could agree to, for many had stated it to him before, for many had stated it to others who had known the aforementioned her before everything that had happened.

"And he looks like him. They will keep the Stormlands in order and the North." He was sure of that. For those that were old enough to remember would see the resemblance and those that were young would hear it from their fathers and mothers. He was also sure of the fact that many would fight it, but that would ease in both time and the memories.

"So long as we control them." Cersei thinned her lips, taking a sip of her water and placing the goblet on the table with an audible clunk. The hollow sound was carried across the room by the still, tenseness in the air. They would control them, for he knew exactly how they would.

"Lorch is worried that the two plan to escape, he dragged the boy down here yesterday." Tywin remarked before stuffing a piece of bacon into his mouth and ripping it apart as he waited for his daughter to speak.

"It's inevitable," Cersei felt her glare pass over the table, her voice still and unwavering in those two words. The bitterness would cause anyone other than her father to flinch at the sound. Anyone but the man who had taught her that bitterness.

"My Lord?" Gendry appeared at the door, Seamlessly shutting up any conversation of their lives by simply arriving at the door. The boy, of course, had no idea what had happened - nor of what his actions had caused in the others.

"Boy, is everything okay?" Tywin swallowed before asking, he could hear the hesitation in his ward's voice. There was something more in that… He motioned the boy forwards, who quickly complied and moved forwards. Slowly.

"I... Arya's bleeding my lord…" He looked down at the wood of the table, his eyes stuck to the food and plates of the lord's to avoid eye contact with them.

"Then go get a Maester, why are you coming to me about it?" Tywin bit back to the boy, his glare promising issue if the boy did not stutter something out quickly.

Which he did, of course. "It's not from a wound... It's from..." He trailed off, blood draining from his face once again until he looked as white as the hair of a true Targeryn. His hand movements answered any remaining questions.

With that, Tywin turned as pale as the boy before him. Even he, a man who had dealt with the bloods of war and the flowering of his daughter, was not sure how to deal with a girl now as the implications of his own plans rose to being. He had handed his daughter off to Septas and tutors at a young age, but this was a girl who would not respond to these types of people.

His daughter, however, offered him no help. She was looking between her father's face and the young boy's with a cackle of laughter echoing across the room. She was not joyous at what she heard, more she was shocked and amused. Amused that the boy she wanted dead and the father she never really knew had to deal with a girl newly flowered - for she was sure that no other in the court would help them

"Seven! Go comfort her boy." Cersei rolled her eyes as the boy had continued to stand there looking confused, at what exactly he was meant to do as the girl was still only a girl. "She'll need it."

"But…" Gendry felt his protest rumble a little too loudly from his mouth and caught his words before they escaped once more, pausing a moment before continuing in a barely heard murmur. "she threatened to run Needle through me."

Cersei laughed for a moment, the bark filling the air more than how a roar ever could have. Perhaps she remembered been in Arya's position; perhaps she just found the boy's reaction humorous. Gendry didn't care, he just wanted to help his friend in some way. "Have a septa take up what she needs." Gendry was about to ask her whatever she meant, but Cersei just rolled her eyes and butted in before the boy could ask. "Tell her that Lady Arya's moonblood has arrived."

"Thank you, m'lady." Gendry politely bowed and Cersei waved him off with a dismissing wave of her hand.

"Well your plans may have been set in motion, father." Tywin did not meet the look he knew that his daughter was pulling at him, for he did not see a point. He simple nodded at the words his daughter had said and allowed her to leave. She was right, after all. His plans had been set into motion, and the girl would not be happy at their result.

"Arya…" Gendry placed his hand on her shoulder, his palm sitting on the sharpness of her shoulder and warming the skin below it. She hadn't moved since the handmaiden had taken her sheets away to clean them, sitting propped up on the wooden headboard of the bed with her legs folded beneath her."Lord Tywin wants to see us." He kept his voice as soft as he could, watching the turmoil on her face run fast and then slow right down as she heard the words he had said.

"Okay…" She stood slowly, looking over Gendry's face before standing. The handmaiden had managed to pull Arya into a dress and helped her clean up the blood that had remained. But still she was nervous, and she was afraid.

They did not speak as they walked to Lord Tywin's solar, Gendry for the second time that day. He hoped he would not be making a habit of it. But still the thoughts lingered in his mind, that things like this would not be something that their warden would take advantage of them. They did not move with the same zeal that they had been seem moving with before - they seemed to linger in places and sigh between corners and long corridors.

When they arrived, the men that guarded the door opened it quickly. Tywin was facing them, his desk set up so that he saw their faces when the door was opened. "Sit down." He motioned as they walked in to the seats before the desk. "This will not take long."

"My Lord?" Gendry stood beside the seat, his eyebrow raised slightly but his eyes still cast down - even if he had been told to look up many times before. For even if he was looking up, he was still looking down, or been looked down upon - he chose to stay in his 'place' for it was easier for him, and easier for so many more.

"It will not take long boy." Tywin motioned at the seat once more, his eye brows raised to hide his irritation at the fact that the boy would not do as commanded first time. But the Lannister Lord was not as irritated as he should have been, for the boy seemed to have learnt something from his time in King's Landing - do not trust anything for a moment. He waited until both Gendry and Arya were sat before returning to his work. After a few, long, moments, he spoke up. "Your wedding arrangements have been made." Tywin smirked, continuing to write the letter he was working on as he spoke. Clearly ignoring the inhaled gasps from the two before him. "The two of you will be wed before the year is out."

"Why?" Arya was the one to speak up first, her voice sharp and low - dripping with irritation and anger. She was only still seated in her chair due to the hand holding her down in Gendry. He himself was annoyed, openly glaring at the lord, the only time Tywin had ever seen Gendry do this. He'd seen hidden glares, snarls of annoyance, but the glare. The glare was something more.

"I have my reasons that you would not understand." Tywin's voice was clear, crisp and unlike the irritation spurted at him by his wards. "The matter is not up for discussion."

"You can't do this…" Arya was trying to think of the reasons why, but she was not sure why. Neither of them were particularly well versed in the rules and laws surrounding marriage. But she was sure, so sure, that she could not be engaged to someone without the permission of her family. Even if that family were far away.

"I can and I will." Tywin bit out, his words not raised above the tone he had spoke in before - but they were bitter and pointed at the anger that the girl was expressing and the confusion the boy had. "You are my wards. You will do as instructed and do your duty for the realm." Tywin Lannister did not care for the realm, but in this case he had to. He had to for his legacy to carry on. For his ending of wars by both peaceful and violent means will be remembered more then by ending them in one of those two ways.

"But how will marrying Gendry do anything for the realm?" Arya spat out, her voice angered and confused. The Lannister Lord before her knew of the facts that she was not a girl that wished for marriage in her life - and yet he was insisting on marrying her to a bastard who had no claim. It made no sense. To her. And to Gendry.

"You will not understand the matter at stake." "The peace of the realm will resolve on your marriage." At least that was how Tywin Lannister saw it. For a Stark held enough stead in her name to calm the north. And a dark haired, blue eyed Baratheon could control the Stormlands more than a blonde, green eyed Lannister one. It would not help to tame Stannis Baratheon's rumours, but that could wait for a time less violent. For rumours can be quelled better in peace than in war. "You may leave now." Arya took her leave as soon as Tywin said the words, her glare punch a hole in the walls and the doors she encountered.

But for the first time since they had arrived at King's Landing, she left the room without Gendry.

Gendry had lingered, stood in Tywin's solar before the man's desk.

"Are you not following her?" Tywin's eyebrow rose as he finally noticed, a few long moments had passed with the boy stood before his desk and Tywin was beginning to find it odd.

"May I speak freely, my lord?" Gendry asked, his voice seeming distant. As if he was not quite there with his body, his thoughts raging elsewhere - perhaps ahead of time.

"Your little friend seems not to ask when she does." Tywin smirked, he did appreciate the fact through. "Go ahead."

"She is not a little girl." Gendry stared Tywin in the eye, not backing down. "Try not to treat her like one."

"And how do you know this?" The older man raised an eyebrow, looking over the boy carefully. "You are not much older than her."

"She is wolf." The boy looked down to the ground, causing a smile that he disguised away to be hidden further. Tywin glared at that, but his eyes were not angered by his comment - just unsure of what they meant by it. "She's seen worse than the king has." That was not hard, Tywin remarked mentally. She could school Joffery on things he had never know with the story of one day of her life on the road. Not that the boy king would ever let her. "She's seen worse than me." Tywin didn't doubt that either. "At least I wasn't there when my parents died." Gendry noted, turning towards the window for a moment before turning, with a glare, back to Tywin. "My lord."

Gendry turned on his heals walked towards the door, keeping his head low after he had bowed lowly. His words lingering in the air as he moved quickly to leave the room.

"Boy." Tywin's voice cut through those words and caused Gendry to turn sharply on the balls of his feet. "most would have you punished for your words." Tywin's voice was darkened as his words were set into the younger boy.

"I know." Gendry said, his eyes fixed on the floor slightly to his left - he wasn't sure how Lord Tywin was looking at him, but he was sure it would not be a good thing. He kept his eyes averted to prevent any extra damage that might be caused by his words.

"I am not most." Tywin grinned, knowing that the darkness in his words and the fear it had caused would have been enough to stop Gendry from been as insolent in front of company.

"I know." Gendry turned and left, keeping his head low to hide his grin.

Elsewhere, across Westeros, stood a group of men in a tent belonging to a different set of Royals. Young Robb Stark stood at the centre of the group, waiting. Waiting for a boy who apparently had knowledge of his sister. Although his mother had already left, he needed to hear the boy's story for himself. He needed to be sure of the boy, Gendry, would protect his sister and he would be able to help her. As he began to loose himself in his thoughts a knock was heard at the door and his squire showed the boy into the tent.

"Thank you Olyvar, this will take but a moment." Robb frowned, dismissing the Fray boy. He knew that the Fray's had been promised Arya's hand in marriage and he could not have them hearing of what was going on in Kings Landing, or what happened on the road, through a family member.

"Your grace?" The boy, Hot Pie, seemed quite shaken up by everything. Robb didn't blame him, who could, the boy had seen hell and was, after all, a simple cook.

"Sit boy." He commanded, motioning towards a seat at the table. Robb sat opposite him, despite the men around him. "I'd like to start off by thanking you for the pies, I'm sure my men are quite grateful for them." Robb smiled at the boy, who seemed to be looking around with a great amount of nerves to the subjects that may have been at hand. But the boy seemed pleased at what Robb had said.

"Thank you, your grace." The boy smiled, looking down at the table for he was scared to look the man in the eyes - but still he smiled, and remembered his manners. And smiled.

"Now, I have news about my sister and your friend that I would think you would like to hear." Robb took a sip of his wine when he finished speaking to hide his smile behind the rim of the goblet. Allowing the words he had said to sink in.

"You do?" Hot Pie looked up and beamed, excited at whatever this news could be. Because he just wanted to hear something about them, something. Something that wasn't some rumour about what had happened in Lord Tywin's care that he knew not to be true. And something that was coming from the man he knew to be his King, who had taken time out of his day and his men to speak with a cook boy.

"My mother is going south and hopefully you will be seeing them both soon enough." Robb saw the boy's eyes light up and he smiled slightly, trying to keep his featured schooled and as stone hard as his father's. But the boy's smile hit something in his memories, the memories of Arya's habit of becoming friends with no prejudice other than to the 'stuck-up' lordlings and ladies; the memories of their home with the innocent girl 'sword-fighting' with Jon and him and later with the butcher's boy.

"Gendry and Arry?" the boy smiled widely, practically bouncing in the chair that had been occupied by stone faced and boisterous nobles alike - now occupied by a smiling boy younger than himself. "Are coming here?"

"Hopefully." Robb kept all his emotion back in saying the word, keeping his voice in a kingly manner. If he couldn't school his features for a lowly kitchen boy, how could he manage any other.

Hot-Pie seemed so ready to blurt out so many different words in his excitement - and for a moment Robb was sure that he was going to, but instead the boy dropped to his knee and spoke a deep, truthful "Thank you, your grace."

That was the point where Robb could not hold back his smile and helped the boy back onto his feet and the chair he had left in aid of bowing to him. "I was wondering if you could tell me of what this boy, Gendry, is like?" He wasn't quite sure why he wanted to know the answer to that question in that moment. In any other case he would have dismissed the boy then - but he wanted to know. "And how was my sister?"

"She threatened to kill me with that sword of hers when we first met…" Hot Pie somehow seemed almost excited by this fact, which concerned Robb a slight bit more than he would care to admit. "And he protected her." The he, Robb assumed, was this Gendry boy. "They looked after each other after the gold cloaks came for him but she was as well as we all were, your grace" The boy talked quickly, muttering through his words almost excitedly. He was ecstatic about getting to talk about his closest friends. "He won't let any harm come to her, your grace." The boy assured him, grinning from ear to ear. "He really does care for her."

"She has a sword?" Robb raised his eyebrow and the boy nodded. He thought of how she could have managed that before chuckling out the name "Jon…" When he'd thought he'd managed to figure everything out about what had happened to his sister, without really knowing the horrors she had face, he smiled towards the boy before him. "Thank you for telling me this, Hot Pie." The smile seemed to be infectious and the boy soon smiled also. "You can leave back to the kitchens whenever you feel."

"Thank you, your grace." Hot Pie was quick to make it to his feet, bowing lightly and bumbling from the tent. The four lords that had remained in the tent moved from either side of Robb to stand before him, each of them showing varying levels of understanding of what had just transpired before them.

"You shouldn't be trusting him, your grace." Bolton piped up from the farthest left.

"He knew my sister." Robb said with pure understanding of what he was saying and the trust he was holding in the boy. "He knows things that your men could never tell me." Robb's statement caused a few chuckles from the Umber, Karstark and Glover.

"And how can you be so sure?" Bolton growled out his question, the look on his face seemed to show that he would not forget the views of those before him on this matter - however trivial it may happen to be.

"My sister is an interesting and singular person, Lord Bolton." Robb stood, rolling out his back and the muscles there as he spoke. "I know her well and I'd know if the girl Hot Pie talks about was not my sister."

"He could be a spy." Lord Bolton narrowed his eyes at the young king.

"No spy cooks that well." Umber rumbled out a laugh from the farthest right, beside him Glover also chuckled. The evening then continued into discussions of the matters of what remained of the war. Bolton's words ignored as if they meant little more than the worries of a man searching too high for his station.