JON

      Jon climbed the steps slowly, trying not to think that this might be the last time ever. Ghost padded silently beside him. Outside, snow swirled through the castle gates, and the yard was all noise and chaos, but inside the thick stone walls it was still warm and quiet. Too quiet for Jon’s liking.

      He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at his hand. He took courage from that. He straightened, and entered the room.

      Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran’s side. She had her meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the honey and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once did she leave the room. So Jon had stayed away.

      But now there was no more time.

      He stood in the door for a moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The window was open. Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head.

      Lady Stark looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him. Finally, she blinked. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice strangely flat and emotionless.

      “I came to see Bran,” Jon said. “To say good-bye.”

      Her face did not change. Her long auburn hair was dull and tangled. She looked as though she had aged twenty years. “You’ve said it. Now go away.”

      Part of him wanted only to flee, but he knew that if he did he might never see Bran again. He took a nervous step into the room. “Please,” he said.

      Something cold moved in her eyes. “I told you to leave,” she said. “We don’t want you here.”

      Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry. Now it only made him angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch soon, and face worse dangers than Catelyn Tully Stark. “He’s my brother,” he said.

      “Shall I call the guards?”

      “Call them,” Jon said, defiant. “You can’t stop me from seeing him.” He crossed the room, keeping the bed between them, and looked down on Bran where he lay.

      She was holding one of his hands. It looked like a claw. This was not the Bran he remembered. The flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over bones like sticks. Under the blanket, his legs bent in ways that made Jon sick. His eyes were sunken deep into black pits; open, but they saw nothing. The fall had shrunken him somehow. He looked half a leaf, as if the first strong wind would carry him off to his grave.

      Yet under the frail cage of those shattered ribs, his chest rose and fell with each shallow breath.

      “Bran,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I was afraid.” He could feel the tears rolling down his cheeks. Jon no longer cared. “Don’t die, Bran. Please. We’re all waiting for you to wake up. Me and Robb and the girls, everyone …”

      Lady Stark was watching. She had not raised a cry. Jon took that for acceptance. Outside the window, the direwolf howled again. The wolf that Bran had not had time to name.

      “I have to go now,” Jon said. “Uncle Benjen is waiting. I’m to go north to the Wall. We have to leave today, before the snows come.” He remembered how excited Bran had been at the prospect of the journey. It was more than he could bear, the thought of leaving him behind like this. Jon brushed away his tears, leaned over, and kissed his brother lightly on the lips.

      “I wanted him to stay here with me,” Lady Stark said softly.

      Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was talking to him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the room.

      “I prayed for it,” she said dully. “He was my special boy. I went to the sept and prayed seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him here with me. Sometimes prayers are answered.”

      Jon did not know what to say. “It wasn’t your fault,” he managed after an awkward silence.

      Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. “I need none of your absolution, bastard.”

      Jon lowered his eyes. She was cradling one of Bran’s hands. He took the other, squeezed it. Fingers like the bones of birds. “Good-bye,” he said.

      He was at the door when she called out to him. “Jon,” she said. He should have kept going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

      “Yes?” he said.

      “It should have been you,” she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and began to weep, her whole body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her cry before.

      It was a long walk down to the yard.

      Outside, everything was noise and confusion. Wagons were being loaded, men were shouting, horses were being harnessed and saddled and led from the stables. A light snow had begun to fall, and everyone was in an uproar to be off.

      Robb was in the middle of it, shouting commands with the best of them. He seemed to have grown of late, as if Bran’s fall and his mother’s collapse had somehow made him stronger. Grey Wind was at his side.

      “Uncle Benjen is looking for you,” he told Jon. “He wanted to be gone an hour ago.”

      “I know,” Jon said.