“My lady, you ought cover your head,” Ser Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north. “Youwill take a chill.”

“It is only water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her hair hung wet and heavy, a loose strand stuckto her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once she did notcare. The southern rain was soft and warm. Catelyn liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as amother’s kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at Riverrun. She remembered thegodswood, drooping branches heavy with moisture, and the sound of her brother’s laughter as hechased her through piles of damp leaves. She remembered making mud pies with Lysa, the weight ofthem, the mud slick and brown between her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling,and he’d eaten so much mud he was sick for a week. How young they all had been.

Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold and hard, and sometimes at night itturned to ice. It was as likely to kill a crop as nurture it, and it sent grown men running for the nearestshelter. That was no rain for little girls to play in.

“I am soaked through,” Ser Rodrik complained. “Even my bones are wet.” The woods pressedclose around them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied by the small suckingsounds their horses made as their hooves pulled free of the mud. “We will want a fire tonight, mylady, and a hot meal would serve us both.”

“There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead,” Catelyn told him. She had slept many a night there inher youth, traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully had been a restless man in his prime, alwaysriding somewhere. She still remembered the innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewedsourleaf night and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet cakes for thechildren. The sweet cakes had been soaked with honey, rich and heavy on the tongue, but howCatelyn had dreaded those smiles. The sourleaf had stained Masha’s teeth a dark red, and made hersmile a bloody horror.

“An inn,” Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. “If only … but we dare not risk it. If we wish to remainunknown, I think it best we seek out some small holdfast …” He broke off as they heard sounds upthe road; splashing water, the clink of mail, a horse’s whinny. “Riders,” he warned, his hand droppingto the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it never hurt to be wary.

They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw them; a column of armed mennoisily fording a swollen stream. Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The banner in the hand of theforemost rider hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen wore indigo cloaks and on their shouldersflew the silver eagle of Seagard. “Mallisters,” Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she had not known.

“My lady, best pull up your hood.”

Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with them, surrounded by his knights,his son Patrek by his side and their squires close behind. They were riding for King’s Landing and theHand’s tourney, she knew. For the past week, the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad;knights and freeriders, singers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons laden with hops or corn orcasks of honey, traders and craftsmen and whores, and all of them moving south.

She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he had been jesting with her uncle ather wedding feast; the Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his gifts had been lavish. Hisbrown hair was salted with white now, his face chiseled gaunt by time, yet the years had not touchedhis pride. He rode like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had come to fear somuch. As the riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a curt greeting, but it was only a high lord’s courtesyto strangers chance met on the road. There was no recognition in those fierce eyes, and his son did noteven waste a look.

teven waste a look.

“He did not know you,” Ser Rodrik said after, wondering.

“He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of the road, wet and tired. It would neveroccur to him to suspect that one of them was the daughter of his liege lord. I think we shall be safeenough at the inn, Ser Rodrik.”

It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north of the great confluence of the Trident.

Masha Heddle was fatter and greyer than Catelyn remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but shegave them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her ghastly red smile. “Two rooms atthe top of the stair, that’s all there is,” she said, chewing all the while. “They’re under the bell tower,you won’t be missing meals, though there’s some thinks it too noisy. Can’t be helped. We’re full up,or near as makes no matter. It’s those rooms or the road.”

It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped narrow staircase. “Leave your bootsdown here,” Masha told them after she’d taken their coin. “The boy will clean them. I won’t have youtracking mud up my stairs. Mind the bell. Those who come late to meals don’t eat.” There were nosmiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.

When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had changed into dry clothes. She satby the window, watching rain run down the pane. The glass was milky and full of bubbles, and a wetdusk was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the muddy crossing where the two great roadsmet.

The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it was an easy ride down to Riverrun.

Her father had always given her wise counsel when she needed it most, and she yearned to talk tohim, to warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needed to brace for war, how much more soRiverrun, so much closer to King’s Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to the westlike a shadow. If only her father had been stronger, she might have chanced it, but Hoster Tully hadbeen bedridden these past two years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now.

The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through rocky foothills and thickforests into the Mountains of the Moon, past high passes and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn andthe stony Fingers beyond. Above the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and impregnable, its towers reachingfor the sky. There she would find her sister … and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought. SurelyLysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She might have the very proof that Nedneeded to bring the Lannisters to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and theeastern lords who owed them service.

Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those passes, rock slides were common,and the mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending from the heights to rob and kill andmelting away like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale in search of them. Even JonArryn, as great a lord as any the Eyrie had ever known, had always traveled in strength when hecrossed the mountains. Catelyn’s only strength was one elderly knight, armored in loyalty.

No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her path ran north to Winterfell,where her sons and her duty were waiting for her. As soon as they were safely past the Neck, shecould declare herself to one of Ned’s bannermen, and send riders racing ahead with orders to mount awatch on the kingsroad.

The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn saw the land clear enough in hermemory. The marketplace was just across the way, and the village a mile farther on, half a hundredwhite cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be more now; the summer had been longand peaceful. North of here the kingsroad ran along the Green Fork of the Trident, through fertilevalleys and green woodlands, past thriving towns and stout holdfasts and the castles of the river lords.

Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever enemies, whose quarrels her fatherwas obliged to settle; Lady Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous vaultsof Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven wives and filled his twin castles withchildren, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as well. All of themwere bannermen to the Tullys, their swords sworn to the service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if thatwould be enough, if it came to war. Her father was the staunchest man who’d ever lived, and she hadno doubt that he would call his banners … but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygersand Mootons had sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar Targaryen on theTrident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubtas to which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath,but ever after her father had called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn thoughtfervently. They must not let it.

but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygersand Mootons had sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar Targaryen on theTrident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubtas to which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath,but ever after her father had called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn thoughtfervently. They must not let it.

Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor. “We had best make haste if we hope toeat tonight, my lady.”

“It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we pass the Neck,” she told him. “Commontravelers attract less notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on some family business, say.”

“As you say, my lady,” Ser Rodrik agreed. It was only when she laughed that he realized whathe’d done. “The old courtesies die hard, my—my daughter.” He tried to tug on his missing whiskers,and sighed with exasperation.

Catelyn took his arm. “Come, Father,” she said. “You’ll find that Masha Heddle sets a good table, Ithink, but try not to praise her. You truly don’t want to see her smile.”

The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end and a fi............