(A/N: sorry it took so long i just go hella insperation for other story's also finalize some future adventures)
A fortnight after the king's raven reached Winterfell, the first people to see the northern ship thought it was wreckage.
Blackwater Bay lay beneath a hard grey morning, its waters choppy enough to keep the smaller fishing craft close to shore but nowhere near violent enough to explain the thing limping toward King's Landing beneath a pair of sodden Stark banners. Men along the harbor stopped what they were doing one by one as it crawled into view, dockworkers straightening beneath sacks, fishermen lowering nets they had forgotten to cast, customs men leaving ledgers open upon their stands while gulls screamed over a vessel that looked as though the sea had already killed it and simply neglected to make the body sink.
Calling it a ship seemed generous.
Half the upper rail was missing. Great pieces had been torn from the hull deeply enough that daylight could be seen through some of the holes whenever the vessel rolled, though rough timber, tarred hides, and strips of sailcloth had been nailed across the worst breaches. The mainmast had snapped several yards above the deck and hung crooked beneath a forest of ropes, while what remained of the principal sail drooped in shredded strips that snapped wetly in the wind like flayed skin. One smaller mast still carried enough canvas to drag the wreck forward, though even that sail had been patched so many times that almost none of its original cloth remained visible.
The figurehead had lost its face.
Blackened wood hung from the bow in broken ribs, and several long spars had been lashed along either side of the hull as if the crew had dismantled portions of their own vessel merely to keep the rest together. Water streamed constantly from gaps near the lower planking. Men with buckets moved below the deck line in a rhythm so steady that those watching from shore understood the ship was not merely damaged but still actively sinking beneath their eyes.
Yet above it flew the grey direwolf of House Stark.
That was what turned curiosity into unease.
A harbor guardsman named Perros had been laughing with another man when he first noticed the banners. The laughter died as the wind opened one of them fully and revealed the running wolf upon white. He had heard the stories from the North, as everyone in King's Landing had by then—Castle Black destroyed, hundreds of black brothers dead, forests withered, a prince who drank life from men and could not be killed by ordinary wounds. Most stories contradicted the one told before them, which had allowed Perros to dismiss the worst as northern superstition grown fat on distance.
The ship approaching the quay made dismissal considerably harder.
"Stark," the man beside him muttered as he wiped both palms against his tunic, though the word did not sound like recognition so much as warning. "That's a Stark banner."
Perros never answered. His eyes had climbed toward the deck, where figures were beginning to appear between the broken rails.
Word moved faster than the ship.
Someone ran toward the Mud Gate. A customs officer sent a boy to fetch the harbor master, then apparently thought better of waiting and sent another for the gold cloaks. Sailors emerged from taverns that should have been empty at that hour, while merchants whose cargo was already being unloaded abandoned perfectly valuable crates in the street to join the crowd pressing toward the waterfront. Before the northern vessel had crossed half the remaining distance, hundreds stood between warehouses and piers, craning for a better look.
The first recognizable man on deck was Prince Rhaegar.
That recognition travelled through the harbor as a murmur that soon became his name.
He stood near the ruined bow with one hand braced against what remained of the rail, silver hair tied roughly behind his head rather than worn in any courtly fashion. His clothing had once been good enough for a royal progress but now bore cuts, dried salt, and dark stains that no washing at sea had completely removed. A healing bruise colored one side of his face beneath the eye, and several of his fingers had been wrapped together with linen.
King Aerys's heir had left King's Landing immaculate.
He had returned looking as though the North had tried to keep him.
Ser Arthur Dayne stood behind him.
A silence travelled through the men close enough to recognize the famous white knight, because Arthur looked even worse.
Only parts of his armor remained. One shoulder still carried dented plate, though the opposite pauldron had disappeared entirely, leaving battered mail beneath a torn surcoat whose white had become grey with salt and old dirt. Deep scoring ran across the surviving breastplate, one gouge close enough to the heart that men on the quay began murmuring when they saw it. Dawn remained at his side, but even the Sword of the Morning leaned more heavily against the rail than anyone who knew his reputation would have imagined possible.
Ser Barristan Selmy emerged moments later carrying almost none of his plate.
The old knight had retained his sword belt, boots, mail beneath the waist, and what remained of one greave. The rest had apparently been discarded somewhere between Winterfell and Blackwater Bay, whether because it had become useless or because the man beneath it had needed to survive the weight. Linen showed beneath torn clothing around his ribs and shoulder, and a dark bruise reached upward from his collar almost to his jaw.
That was when the harbor stopped whispering about a storm.
Storms did not leave knights looking like that.
Eddard Stark appeared near the center of the deck carrying no armor at all. Bandages wrapped most of his torso beneath an open northern coat, several already stained faintly through where wounds had reopened during the voyage, and another strip of linen disappeared beneath his hair near one temple. He moved carefully without appearing weak, though anyone accustomed to wounded men could see the stiffness with which he guarded one side whenever the ship pitched.
Brandon Stark came behind him with his left arm bound in a sling.
His face had acquired a half-healed cut along the cheek, and one hand remained swollen enough that he could not entirely close it. The injury did not appear to have improved his temper. He looked upon King's Landing with such uncomplicated dislike that several men nearest the landing place decided not to stare when his eyes passed over them.
Then Prince Oberyn Martell stepped into view.
Someone laughed nervously.
The laugh died quickly.
Bandages covered nearly everything below Oberyn's jaw.
His chest, ribs, one shoulder, both forearms, and part of his neck had been wrapped until there seemed to be more linen than man beneath his loose Dornish clothing. Several layers had been reinforced with splints, and the stiffness of his walk suggested whatever lay beneath them had not enjoyed the journey. His face, mercifully, remained uncovered, which meant everyone could see exactly how little amusement he found in being observed.
Beside him walked Elia.
She looked untouched.
Not merely uninjured. Untouched.
Her clothes were clean. Her dark hair had been properly arranged despite the condition of the vessel around her, and while exhaustion showed faintly beneath her eyes, there was no bandage on her body and no bruise visible upon her face. She moved among wounded princes and ruined knights with the calm composure of someone who had either been guarded from every blow or had possessed enough sense not to stand where the blows were falling.
That contradiction unsettled the watching crowd almost as much as the injuries themselves.
Something had happened aboard that ship.
Something bad enough to ruin it, batter two Kingsguard, wound both elder Stark brothers, injure the heir to the throne, and leave Oberyn Martell wrapped like a corpse prepared for burial.
Yet Princess Elia had not been touched.
The ship groaned as it reached the harbor.
Sailors threw ropes toward the quay, and dockworkers caught them with considerably less enthusiasm than usual. Timber scraped against timber as the vessel settled beside the pier, the whole hull shuddering so violently that several men on shore stepped backward, half-expecting it to finally surrender and come apart now that it had reached land.
No one aboard hurried to disembark.
Rhaegar looked toward the gathered gold cloaks instead. His expression had been difficult to read from a distance, but up close the prince seemed exhausted in a way wounds alone could not explain. He exchanged several quiet words with Arthur, then turned toward the center of the deck.
The crowd followed his gaze.
That was when they saw the cage.
It had been hidden behind a shattered section of deckhouse during the approach, chained to the ship itself by links thick enough to secure an anchor. Four additional chains ran from its corners into iron rings driven through the deck, ensuring that whatever happened to the vessel, the cage would not shift without taking half the planking with it.
Inside was Jinx Stark.
No rumor had prepared them for the sight.
He had not merely been chained.
He had been bound as though someone had attempted to restrain a dragon after teaching it the shape of a man.
His wrists had been dragged outward toward opposite sides of the cage and fastened there with heavy iron cuffs. Separate chains bound both elbows, forcing his arms back far enough that the shoulders remained under constant strain. His ankles had been shackled apart, knees drawn into a position that prevented him from standing properly or gathering enough leverage to throw himself against the bars. Another chain crossed his waist, another his chest, and still more ran from a broad iron collar around his neck to every side of the cage.
Every length had been pulled taut.
There was no slack anywhere.
Jinx could barely move enough to breathe.
His black hair had fallen across his face during the voyage, silver-blond streaks running through it more heavily than when he had left Winterfell. Several strands clung damply to his cheeks and jaw. Unlike the others, he wore no visible bandages, though bruising ringed both wrists where iron had rubbed against skin, and dried blood marked one side of his mouth.
The final restraint explained why.
A chain had been forced between his teeth.
Not simply wrapped around his head.
Someone had passed a narrow iron length through his mouth and fixed it to the sides of the cage, drawing it tight enough that he could neither close his jaw fully nor turn his head more than a fraction. Saliva ran constantly from the corner of his mouth, gathering against his chin before dripping onto the floorboards beneath him. Every few breaths his throat worked around the metal, producing a faint wet sound that carried farther than it should have in the suddenly quiet harbor.
Men nearest the pier backed away.
Jinx watched them.
That was worse.
There was intelligence behind his eyes.
He was not unconscious, mad, or broken by the restraints. His gaze moved from face to face with a slow awareness that made the chains seem less like evidence of his helplessness than proof of how terrified those travelling with him had been of allowing him even one free limb.
A gold cloak near the front swallowed visibly.
Another reached for his sword without realizing it.
Brandon saw the movement from the deck.
His good hand closed around the rail.
Eddard noticed too, and whatever warning he gave his brother was too quiet to reach the shore, though Brandon did not move again.
Prince Rhaegar descended first once the gangplank had been lowered.
His boots touched King's Landing stone amid a silence no returning heir should have received. Arthur followed closely despite his injuries, and Barristan came after him, each man receiving startled looks from guards who had expected white cloaks polished bright enough to catch the sun.
Elia disembarked beside Oberyn.
The Dornish prince refused assistance despite the state of his body, though the pause he took halfway down the plank betrayed how much the movement cost him. Elia remained close without embarrassing him by offering a hand where everyone could see it, and Oberyn reached solid ground wearing the expression of a man who would rather tear every bandage open than admit the stairs had hurt.
Eddard and Brandon stayed aboard.
Neither moved far from the cage.
That detail did not escape Rhaegar.
Neither did it escape the gold cloaks beginning to gather in greater numbers beyond the quay.
The captain commanding them stepped forward eventually, though he looked as though he had drawn the short straw for the privilege. "His Grace ordered Prince Jinx Stark delivered immediately into royal custody," he said while trying to keep his attention on Rhaegar rather than the chained figure behind him. His eyes betrayed him anyway, flicking toward the cage whenever metal shifted against metal. "We were told to expect an escort from the North."
Rhaegar looked back toward the ship.
For a moment something passed over his face that made the captain regret the phrasing.
"The North delivered him," the prince said, though weariness flattened whatever else might have lived beneath the words. His gaze moved toward the cage again before returning to the officer. "Your concern should be what happens after you decide those chains belong to you."
The captain stared at him.
Arthur turned his face slightly away.
Oberyn's mouth twitched beneath several days of beard, though whether from pain or amusement no one could tell.
Eddard descended at last.
His movements were deliberate because anything faster pulled at the wounds beneath his bandages. When he reached the quay, he stopped near Rhaegar and looked over the gold cloaks waiting to receive his twin.
No one meeting his eyes could have mistaken him for a man surrendering someone willingly.
The quiet Stark reserve remained, but there was something beneath it now, something colder than Brandon's obvious anger. Eddard had apparently spent the voyage learning exactly what it required to keep Jinx bound, and he did not seem eager to watch strangers discover the same lesson.
Brandon came down next.
He had no such restraint in his face.
The gold cloak commander looked from the two brothers toward the cage and seemed to reconsider the wisdom of whatever procedure he had intended to follow.
Behind them, sailors began preparing the hoist.
The cage was too heavy to carry down the gangplank with Jinx inside, and no one was willing to open it merely to transfer him. Thick ropes were fed through the iron frame instead, while a dockside crane turned slowly overhead and its great hook descended toward the ship.
Jinx followed it with his eyes.
The chain in his mouth shifted as his jaw moved against it.
Saliva slid down his chin.
Eddard heard the sound and looked back.
For a moment the harbor vanished from his attention. There was only his twin inside iron, every joint held taut, unable even to wipe his own mouth. Whatever had happened during the journey had made those restraints necessary—Eddard knew that better than anyone standing upon the shore—but necessity had not made the sight easier to endure.
Jinx found his eyes.
Something almost amused moved through them.
Eddard's expression hardened.
He knew that look.
Even gagged, immobilized, chained to an iron cage, and surrounded by a city that had gathered to stare at him like some captured beast, Jinx had somehow found the situation ridiculous.
Eddard turned away before his brother could enjoy the recognition too much.
The crane began lifting.
Iron groaned against rope. The cage rose from the deck one slow foot at a time, swaying above the ruined ship while Jinx hung inside it exactly as the king had commanded.
In chains.
The crowd retreated as his shadow crossed the quay.
High above the harbor, bells had begun ringing through King's Landing, carrying word uphill toward the Red Keep that the king's son had returned and that the Wolf Prince of Winterfell had finally come south to answer Aerys's summons.
No one on the waterfront yet knew why the ship looked as though something had spent the entire voyage trying to tear its way out.
The gold cloak captain entrusted with receiving Jinx Stark had spent most of his life believing the North was a place men went when they had done something wrong.
He had never travelled farther north than the Trident and knew the people who lived beyond it chiefly through tavern stories, court gossip, and the confident opinions of men who had never been there either. Northerners were supposed to be crude, humorless creatures who worshipped trees, slept beside wolves, and mistook stubbornness for honor. The stories coming out of Castle Black had only confirmed what he had always suspected, and now, standing on the quay while an iron cage descended from a half-destroyed ship with a Stark prince chained inside it like a mad dog, he found little reason to reconsider.
Captain Harbert Bywater watched the cage settle onto the wheeled transport his men had brought from the Red Keep and felt, more than fear, a private satisfaction. The king had been right to demand chains. Whatever noble blood flowed through the boy inside, there was nothing princely about the saliva running beneath his chin or the way his eyes followed every living person who passed close to the bars.
Rhaegar saw something very different.
He had watched Jinx through the voyage. He knew what the restraints meant, knew why Arthur's armor was torn nearly beyond use and why Barristan had thrown half of his own into the sea once dented plate became more burden than protection. He had watched Eddard and Brandon bleed trying to keep Jinx away from sailors when the hunger returned, and he had watched Oberyn lose enough skin and blood that Elia had spent an entire night holding bandages against him while Jinx, somewhere beyond a locked hatch, screamed until the timbers shook.
The prince looked from the gathering crowd toward the long road climbing through the city and immediately understood the danger.
The direct route to the Red Keep would take them through some of the most crowded streets in King's Landing.
Rhaegar stepped toward the captain before the transport began moving, one hand pressed unconsciously against the bruised ribs beneath his ruined clothes. "Take the river road around the busier wards and bring us through the lower gate," he ordered, his attention already shifting toward the cage when Jinx's head moved at the sound of people pressing closer along the quay. "I want as few people near him as possible. No markets, no squares, no crowds."
Captain Bywater heard caution and mistook it for softness.
He had served long enough beneath Aerys to recognize opportunity when it appeared, or at least believed he did. The king had summoned the Stark boy in chains; Prince Rhaegar returned with him half-dressed like a wounded hedge knight and immediately began worrying about whether common people might upset the northern savage. The captain could already imagine how the tale might sound in the throne room if told correctly: the heir had wanted to hide the prisoner through alleys, while a loyal officer of the king had displayed the captured threat openly and reminded the city whose authority had brought him south.
"The main road is faster, Your Grace," Bywater said as he signaled two men toward the handles of the wheeled platform, managing the little bow expected of him without allowing it to interfere with his decision. "The king commanded immediate delivery. I would not presume to delay His Grace merely because the prisoner dislikes being looked at."
Rhaegar's face changed.
Arthur saw it before the captain did.
The Sword of the Morning came one pace forward despite the stiffness in his injured side, but Rhaegar had already understood that arguing here would cost time they did not have. The crowd around the harbor had doubled since the cage touched stone, and every shout drew more faces from windows and alleys.
"Then move quickly," Rhaegar said, and there was enough urgency beneath the controlled words that Barristan looked toward Bywater with something close to pity. "Do not stop. Do not allow anyone near the cage, and whatever you think you understand about the man inside it, forget it."
Bywater bowed again.
He did not forget.
The procession entered King's Landing through streets already swelling with rumor.
Word ran ahead of them in the way only scandal could travel through that city. By the time they climbed away from the docks, people had begun gathering along balconies, doorways, roofs, market awnings, and alleys. Bakers abandoned ovens to stand outside flour-dusted. Fishwives crowded against gold cloak lines with blood still beneath their fingernails. Children climbed barrels for a better view until mothers hauled them back by their clothes, while apprentices called up toward windows that the Wolf Prince had come and that the stories were true.
Jinx smelled them before he could properly see them.
Thousands.
Sweat beneath wool. Grease. Blood from butcher stalls. Fish. Horses. Dogs. Fresh bread. Living bodies packed close enough that their warmth changed the air around the procession. Every heartbeat reached senses the hunger had sharpened beyond anything human, and the first few streets placed more life within his reach than he had encountered during the entire voyage.
His eyes changed.
Eddard saw the grey begin disappearing around the pupils and moved immediately toward the rear of the cage.
"Faster," he called toward the gold cloaks pulling the platform, one hand closing around a bar while he watched his brother's shoulders begin to tense against the chains. He did not waste breath explaining why. Anyone who had crossed Blackwater Bay with them should have understood from his voice alone.
The captain had not.
The first chain groaned.
It was not loud, but every person who had spent the voyage listening for that sound recognized it immediately.
Brandon's face hardened. His left arm remained useless inside its sling, but his right hand came instinctively toward the sword at his hip while Oberyn, bandaged nearly from throat to waist, stopped whatever quiet remark he had been making to Elia and looked back.
Jinx pulled again.
Iron rings driven through the cage frame trembled.
The crowd loved it.
Someone shouted from a window that the wolf wanted loose. Laughter followed from people too far away to see the yellow beginning to creep into Jinx's eyes, and men along the street pushed closer despite the gold cloaks trying to keep a corridor open. An apple struck the side of the cage and burst against the bars.
Jinx's head snapped toward it.
Not the apple.
The hand that had thrown it.
His entire body surged.
Chains went taut with a sound like rigging catching a sudden gale. The cage lurched on its wheels despite six men holding it, and one of the iron brackets securing his right arm bent inward enough that rust flaked from the bolt.
Rhaegar stopped walking.
For one terrible moment the street, the shouting crowd, and even his father's waiting throne seemed to vanish beneath the memory of a ruined ship pitching beneath black water while Jinx battered against a locked bulkhead.
"Move!" Rhaegar shouted, the restraint finally breaking from his voice as he pointed up the road. The crowd nearest him went quiet at the rare sight of the Crown Prince yelling, but his anger was for the gold cloaks rather than them. "Get him out of here now. Clear the road and run if you have to."
The men pulling the cart obeyed.
Captain Bywater did not.
He had seen the chain bend, certainly. He had also seen the boy fail to break it. What Rhaegar regarded as warning, Bywater interpreted as proof that the elaborate northern precautions were working exactly as intended.
More dangerously, he had begun to resent being frightened in front of his own men.
The captain walked alongside the cage with his belly straining beneath a gold cloak breastplate made for a thinner version of himself. Years of city duty and access to officers' tables had softened him considerably, and the hand resting on his sword possessed more jeweled rings than calluses.
He looked through the bars and saw Jinx staring back.
There was no princely dignity there now.
Saliva hung in thin strands around the iron crossing his mouth. His shoulders shook under the strain of holding himself against the restraints. Yellow had flooded most of his eyes, leaving red beginning to gather around the edges, while his nostrils flared with each ragged breath.
Bywater smiled.
It was not a large smile.
That somehow made it uglier.
He said something to one of the men beside him about northern beasts needing northern cages, quietly enough that perhaps he expected the Starks behind him not to hear. Brandon heard. So did Eddard. Neither answered, because all their attention had shifted to Jinx's breathing.
Rhaegar heard too.
He turned just as the captain decided to prove something.
Perhaps he meant to show his men that the chained prince could not reach him. Perhaps he imagined himself returning to the Red Keep with a story about touching the monster everyone else feared. Perhaps, after years spent watching Aerys reward those who confirmed his suspicions, he had simply learned the dangerous habit of treating cruelty as loyalty.
Whatever the reason, Bywater stepped alongside the cage and pushed his hand through the bars.
Arthur went cold.
"Don't," he said, but the warning came while the captain's arm was already inside.
Bywater reached toward Jinx's hair.
Jinx looked at the arm.
Everything else disappeared.
Eddard saw the moment recognition ended and hunger took its place. His twin's eyes fixed upon the exposed wrist, then travelled up the fleshy forearm toward the softness beneath the captain's sleeve.
Jinx moved.
The restraint across his mouth snapped first.
He did not break the chain itself. His jaw slammed forward with enough force to tear the leather and iron fittings holding it to the sides of his head, ripping skin at both corners of his mouth as the whole arrangement jerked loose. At the same instant he threw his weight backward against the opposite side of the cage.
Metal screamed.
The rear bars bowed outward.
One of the bolts tore halfway through the wooden platform.
That inch of movement was enough.
Bywater tried to pull away.
Jinx caught his wrist between his teeth.
The captain screamed.
He had barely begun trying to wrench his arm free when Jinx twisted his head and pulled backward with the full strength of his body. The shoulder took the strain first. Something tore beneath Bywater's armor with a thick, muffled crack, followed by a second sound as the joint came apart.
Then flesh gave.
The captain fell backward into the street.
His arm did not come with him.
For one heartbeat no one around the cage understood what they had seen.
Then blood struck the stones.
Bywater's scream changed.
He clutched the ruined shoulder with his remaining hand and rolled onto his side while arterial blood sprayed between his fingers, spattering the boots of two gold cloaks who stood staring too long to help him. The crowd recoiled so violently that people fell over one another. A woman screamed from an upstairs window. Somewhere nearby a child began crying.
Inside the cage, Jinx ate.
The severed arm remained caught in his teeth near the wrist. He dragged it farther between the bars as much as his restraints permitted, turned his head, and bit through flesh with the frantic concentration of a starving animal finally given food. Blood ran over his mouth and down his throat, mixing with the saliva already covering his chin. The broken mouth restraint hung uselessly against his neck while his teeth worked through muscle and fat with enough force that several gold cloaks nearby turned away.
Rhaegar stared in horror.
Not at Jinx.
At the captain bleeding on the ground.
He had warned him.
Eddard watched Jinx chew for several moments before something in his shoulders began to loosen. The chains stopped trembling. His breathing slowed enough that individual breaths could once again be heard.
Brandon saw it too.
"He's calming down," he said, not loudly and not with satisfaction, but with the tired recognition of a man who had seen this happen too many times already. His gaze moved briefly toward Bywater, where another gold cloak had finally pressed a cloak against the ruined shoulder. Whatever sympathy Brandon might normally have possessed found little room beside the memory of the captain deliberately ignoring Rhaegar and putting his hand into the cage.
Oberyn looked once at the wounded man and then toward Jinx.
He did not laugh.
That would have made the moment cruel in a way it did not need to be.
Instead, he shifted one bandaged arm more securely around his own ribs and murmured to Elia that the idiot had apparently decided every warning given to him was a challenge. Elia's face had gone pale at the blood, though her eyes remained hard when she looked toward the captain.
Arthur stepped beside the cage.
Jinx noticed him but did not abandon the arm.
The knight studied the bent bars, the torn fitting around Jinx's mouth, and the iron bracket that had nearly pulled free from the frame. The calculations came quickly and unpleasantly.
"We need another restraint before he finishes," Arthur said as he looked toward Barristan rather than the panicked gold cloaks. "Something over the jaw, not through it. And double the rear chains."
Barristan nodded and began issuing orders before anyone from the City Watch found enough composure to object.
Rhaegar turned toward the remaining officer.
The younger gold cloak had gone white.
Whatever pride his captain had hoped to demonstrate had vanished with the arm now disappearing piece by piece between Jinx's teeth.
"We take the shortest road from here," Rhaegar told him, and this time there was no room in his voice for interpretation. He glanced toward the crowd withdrawing into doorways and alleys, then back toward the cage where Jinx had finally stopped straining against every chain at once. "You clear everything ahead of us. Every stall, cart, animal, beggar, drunk, child—everything. If someone is standing in the road when we reach it, you move them."
The officer nodded before Rhaegar finished.
Eddard stepped onto the rear edge of the wheeled platform as the procession began moving again. He remained close enough to Jinx that their eyes could meet through the bent bars, though he made no attempt to take the arm away.
Jinx's gaze had already begun changing.
The terrible yellow remained, but the red around it was fading.
Food.
That was all the body understood for the moment.
Something warm had entered an emptiness that had spent the entire journey sharpening itself against his bones, and as he swallowed the first real mouthfuls his struggle against the restraints diminished. The chains that moments earlier had threatened to tear free now hung under tension without shaking.
Eddard looked at his brother, then at what remained of Captain Bywater behind them.
He felt no triumph.
He felt little pity either.
The man had been warned by the Crown Prince, had seen a cage built like a siege engine around one prisoner, and had still pushed his hand between the bars because pride demanded proof that fear belonged only to lesser men.
Jinx had provided proof of something else.
The main party did not speak about it as they continued uphill.
Rhaegar walked faster. Arthur and Barristan kept to either side of the cage, no longer trusting the City Watch to understand what they were escorting. Brandon remained near Eddard despite his sling, while Oberyn and Elia followed several paces back where the worst of the blood could not reach her skirts.
The crowd gave them considerably more room now.
Rumor moved ahead of them again, faster than horses, changing shape with every mouth that carried it. By the next square men would say Jinx Stark had broken his chains. By the hill someone would swear he had swallowed a gold cloak whole. By sunset perhaps the city would believe the Wolf Prince had devoured ten men before reaching the Red Keep.
None of that worried Rhaegar.
What worried him was the cage.
One corner had bent.
The mouth restraint was gone.
Three iron fittings had begun pulling loose.
And Jinx had not been at his strongest when he did it.
Rhaegar looked toward the towers of the Red Keep rising above them and felt, for the first time since Blackwater Bay came into sight, something colder than dread.
His father wanted the boy delivered in chains.
They had managed that.
What Aerys intended to do once the cage was opened was another matter entirely, and after watching blood drip steadily from Jinx's mouth while the ruined arm disappeared between his teeth, Rhaegar found himself wondering whether anyone in the Red Keep had considered the possibility that the chains were protecting the king as much as they were restraining the prisoner.
The climb from the river to the Red Keep took longer than the voyage through the city.
By the time they passed beneath the outer gate, Jinx had reduced what remained of Captain Bywater's arm to bones and scraps of sinew. One pale hand still protruded grotesquely between the bars beside his face, several jeweled rings untouched because even starving he apparently possessed no appetite for gold. The feeding had done what Eddard hoped, however little he cared to examine the means: the terrible tension had gradually left Jinx's body until his head sagged forward beneath his silver-streaked hair and sleep finally claimed him.
He hung entirely limp inside the cage now. That frightened the Red Keep's guards less than his struggling had frightened the city, though Eddard found the sight worse in another way. Every chain remained drawn so tight that sleep could not grant Jinx a comfortable position; iron held his wrists apart, his shoulders strained backward, his ankles fixed against opposite corners, and a newly fitted leather-and-iron restraint crossed his jaw where the first had been torn away on the road.
Moving the cage up the steps became a small siege in itself.
The wheeled platform had been built for level streets, not the long stone stairs climbing through the Red Keep, and no one was willing to open the cage merely to make transportation easier. Thick ropes were looped around the iron frame while guards hauled from above and men below shoved wooden rollers beneath the platform one after another. Twice one wheel slipped against a stair and sent the whole contraption lurching backward, prompting Arthur and Brandon to seize the frame despite their injuries while Eddard planted himself against the rear bars and felt half-healed wounds tear beneath his bandages.
Jinx never woke.
That was perhaps the only reason the ascent remained merely difficult rather than disastrous.
The farther they climbed, the more of the court appeared to watch. Servants flattened themselves against walls. Knights halted beneath arches and stared openly at Arthur's ruined armor, Barristan's bandages, Oberyn's almost absurd quantity of linen, and the Stark brothers who looked as though someone had beaten them against the inside of a ship. Whispers followed the cage wherever it went, always dying whenever one of Jinx's chains made the smallest sound.
Elia walked among them untouched.
Eddard noticed that too.
She had endured the same storm, the same failing ship, and the same rampage that had left nearly everyone else scarred or bandaged, yet not so much as a bruise marked her face. Rhaegar had seen to that before the fighting began, dragging her belowdecks and securing the hatch while the others remained above with Jinx. Dark Sister had gone to Eddard at the same time, thrown across the deck by Jinx himself in one of the last clear moments before hunger took him entirely.
Eddard still carried it.
The Valyrian sword rested upon his hip now, dark ripples moving faintly through the narrow blade whenever torchlight touched it. Wearing it within the Red Keep made him uneasy for reasons he could not entirely name. Dark Sister belonged too intimately to Targaryen history for its presence upon a Stark to pass unnoticed, but leaving it aboard that wreck of a ship had seemed an even greater folly.
The final doors waited half an hour after they entered the castle.
Two Kingsguard stood before them in white enamelled plate, their attention moving first to Rhaegar and then to Arthur and Barristan. Whatever welcome they might ordinarily have given died when they saw their brothers' condition. One knight glanced toward the cage and stared long enough that the herald beside him had to clear his throat twice before remembering his duty.
The great doors opened inward.
Noise rolled through them.
The throne room was full.
Not crowded in the casual manner of a feast or petition day, but deliberately packed. Lords, ladies, knights, courtiers, septons, officers, visiting merchants, minor nobles, and every sort of creature who survived by being seen near power had gathered beneath the towering columns. News of the ruined Stark ship had outrun them from Blackwater Bay, and word of the gold cloak captain losing his arm had clearly travelled faster still.
The murmuring weakened as Rhaegar entered.
It vanished when the cage followed him.
Eddard had never seen the Iron Throne before.
No description had prepared him for how ugly it was.
Thousands of blades climbed behind the king in a blackened mass, twisted and fused until the throne seemed less made than grown from old violence. Swords rose above Aerys like thorns around something diseased. The steps beneath him appeared dangerously narrow, their edges shadowed by iron points that waited for one careless hand or badly placed foot.
Aerys himself looked almost small inside it.
Eddard had expected more from the man whose name had shaped so many conversations in Winterfell. The king's hair was long and pale, his nails unsettlingly grown, his body wrapped in rich cloth that did little to soften the sharpness of the man beneath it. His violet eyes moved restlessly over the returning party, never remaining anywhere long until something offended or intrigued him enough to hold them.
Lord Tywin Lannister stood at the foot of the throne.
He wore no crown and needed none.
The Hand had dressed simply compared with many of the peacocks crowding the chamber, crimson and gold used with enough restraint that the quality of every piece became more obvious rather than less. He watched Rhaegar approach without revealing what he thought of the prince's bruised face, then allowed his gaze to travel across Arthur, Barristan, Oberyn, the Starks, and finally the cage.
There his attention remained.
Someone else sat near the lower steps.
Eddard nearly missed her because the throne commanded the eye so aggressively, but once he saw the woman he understood why half the northern men nearest him went still.
Queen Rhaella Targaryen possessed the same silver-gold hair as her son, though hers spilled loosely beneath a delicate crown and seemed almost white beneath the windows' cold light. Her beauty was not Elia's warm Dornish grace nor Xuehara's striking eastern perfection. It possessed something quieter and stranger, pale enough that for one disorienting moment Eddard thought of Jinx asleep inside the iron cage behind him.
Brandon must have made the same comparison.
His eyes shifted toward Eddard.
Eddard did not look back long enough to acknowledge it.
Their mother, Elia, Jinx, and the woman sitting beneath the Iron Throne belonged to entirely different peoples, yet there was some quality shared between them that made ordinary beauty seem suddenly insufficient as a word. It was the kind of face singers ruined by describing too often.
The herald announced them.
Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne. Princess Elia Martell. Ser Arthur Dayne. Ser Barristan Selmy. Lord Rickard Stark and his sons. Prince Oberyn Martell.
Then came Jinx.
The herald faltered when he looked toward the cage, perhaps unsure how one formally announced a prince hanging unconscious beneath enough iron to anchor a warship.
Aerys spared him the trouble.
"My son," the king said from high above them, and the warmth expected from a father greeting an heir after weeks away never entered his voice. His attention dragged across Rhaegar's torn clothes and bandaged hands with growing distaste. "I summoned my heir home expecting him to remember that he represents the royal house. Instead you come before me looking scarcely fit to beg outside a sept."
Rhaegar lowered his head.
Aerys was not finished.
His gaze shifted toward Arthur and Barristan, lingering contemptuously over ruined white armor before returning to Rhaegar. "Your Kingsguard look little better. Dayne resembles a sellsword dragged from a ditch, Selmy has apparently misplaced half his armor, and you stand before the court bruised, filthy, and dressed like some hedge prince fleeing a losing war." Only then did the king's eyes settle upon the cage, and a thin satisfaction entered his face. "At least in one matter you have not entirely disappointed me. You brought me the wolf."
A murmur travelled through the court.
Jinx remained asleep.
Eddard watched his brother's chest rise shallowly beneath the chains and wished, not for the first time, that Jinx would remain asleep until they found a way to put food inside him.
Aerys's attention had already moved elsewhere.
His eyes found Dark Sister.
The king leaned forward upon the blades.
Eddard felt the shift in the room before understanding what had caused it, then followed Aerys's stare toward his own hip. Dark Sister's pommel showed beneath his torn coat, unmistakable to anyone raised among Targaryen histories.
Rhaegar saw his father recognize the sword.
He spoke before Aerys could.
"Forgive the condition in which I have returned to you, Father," Rhaegar said as he stepped forward, drawing Aerys's attention deliberately back onto himself. He had rehearsed pieces of the explanation during the last nights aboard ship, but standing beneath the throne stripped the careful speech of whatever polish it once possessed. "I would not have chosen to enter your court this way. By the time we reached the Blackwater, choice had become something of a luxury."
Aerys settled back a fraction.
Rhaegar began with the storm.
They had been only several days south when it struck them, harder and faster than the captain expected. The vessel had not been built to endure the sea they encountered. One inexperienced sailor made a disastrous mistake while stores were being moved below, and between a split hatch, seawater, and cargo thrown overboard to keep the ship from listing farther, most of their food was lost.
At first no one understood what that meant.
"We thought hunger would inconvenience us," Rhaegar said as he glanced back toward the sleeping figure in the cage, his face tightening at memories Eddard knew too well. "We did not understand that for Jinx it would become something else entirely. What happened at the Wall taught us that he cannot simply fast until another meal presents itself. He must eat frequently now—roughly every two hours when awake, and in quantities that would feed several grown men."
Aerys's mouth curled with disbelief.
Rhaegar kept speaking before his father could interrupt.
They rationed what remained. They fished whenever weather allowed and altered course toward shore with the intention of resupplying, but a damaged mast and worsening leaks slowed them more than expected. Jinx surrendered his own portions first, then began pretending he had eaten when he had not, which fooled no one except those who wanted badly enough to believe him.
By the fourth day, Eddard had seen the change begin.
Rhaegar described it without embellishment.
Jinx stopped sleeping. He could hear sailors moving food belowdeck through two bulkheads. His eyes began changing. He avoided the crew when he could, then asked to be restrained before anyone else realized how close he was to losing control.
They had been too late.
"The first sailor died before Arthur reached him," Rhaegar said, and Arthur's expression hardened at the memory while the court listened in perfect silence. "After that there was very little order left to preserve."
Aerys looked toward the Sword of the Morning.
Arthur did not look away.
Rhaegar explained how Jinx had crossed the deck faster than men could follow, how he had torn through sailors who attempted to stop him and thrown others hard enough to splinter timber. The ship suffered with everyone aboard it. Rails broke. Doors came from their hinges. Part of the upper deck collapsed when Jinx drove Arthur through it, and one section of hull had opened after an impact that nearly put them all into the sea.
Oberyn shifted as Rhaegar spoke of the fighting.
Most of his body remained hidden beneath bandages, yet he held himself with enough stubborn dignity that someone unfamiliar with wounds might not notice how little his left side moved. Eddard knew better. Oberyn had been among the first to reach Jinx and nearly the last to stop fighting him.
"Ser Arthur and Prince Oberyn took the worst of it," Rhaegar continued, allowing the court to see the evidence without listing every injury. "Ser Barristan kept the remaining crew alive long enough for us to secure the lower deck. Brandon and Eddard held him where they could. None of them came away untouched."
Aerys's eyes narrowed. "And you?"
Rhaegar absorbed the accusation hidden inside the question.
"When I saw what was happening, I took Elia below," he answered, his gaze moving briefly toward her. "Jinx had thrown Dark Sister to Eddard before he lost himself entirely. I understood that much of him remained for at least that moment, and I chose to use it. I secured Princess Elia behind the strongest door left belowdecks and returned to the fighting."
Elia's eyes lowered.
She had protested bitterly at the time.
No one needed to know that.
Eddard remembered Jinx's face when he threw him Dark Sister—the yellow only beginning inside his eyes, blood already on his mouth, and enough awareness remaining to force the blade from his own hand before he became someone who might use it on Elia.
The court saw only the sword.
Tywin saw more.
The Hand's attention shifted from Dark Sister to the cage, then to Rhaegar. Eddard could not read the man, but he disliked the care with which Lord Tywin listened.
Rhaegar continued.
It had taken all of them to force Jinx into the cage. By then half the crew were dead or dying and the ship itself barely remained seaworthy. Once trapped, Jinx had continued trying to break free until they discovered the only thing that dulled the madness quickly enough to keep him from tearing the cage apart.
Food.
There had been almost none left.
The dead had provided what the stores could not.
A ripple of revulsion moved through the court.
A woman near the back covered her mouth. One septon whispered something beneath his breath. A young knight looked toward Jinx with naked disgust, then away when Eddard caught him staring.
Rhaegar showed none of them mercy by softening the truth. "We fed him the men he had already killed because the alternative was allowing him to kill everyone still alive," he said, and the exhaustion beneath his words made the sentence uglier than drama would have. "I will not pretend it was anything other than what it was. It kept him calm enough that the rest of us survived."
Aerys stared toward the cage.
There was fascination in his face now.
That worried Eddard far more than disgust would have.
Rhaegar descended to one knee.
The movement startled the court.
It startled Rhaella too.
The Crown Prince bowed his head beneath the throne, bruised and dirty and visibly exhausted, and when he spoke again the measured distance expected between heir and king gave way to something closer to a son asking his father not to make a catastrophic mistake.
"I beg you to hear me before you order that cage opened," Rhaegar said as one bandaged hand rested against his raised knee. "The arm he took in the city is the only substantial food he has had in two days, and it was nowhere near enough. What you see now is not safety. He is asleep because Lady Stark spent many days teaching him to force himself down when hunger becomes too severe. He has learned to sleep rather than feed when there is still enough of him left to choose."
Aerys's face tightened.
Rhaegar lifted his eyes toward him.
"That restraint will not last."
The king gave a small dismissive motion with one hand, impatience beginning to return now that the tale had reached something he could classify as northern superstition. He spoke of frightened sailors, wolves growing into monsters with every telling, and men finding magic whenever they lacked the courage to admit panic had defeated them.
Rhaegar opened his mouth.
Metal groaned behind him.
The sound was not loud.
It did not need to be.
Every person in the throne room heard it.
Eddard turned first.
Jinx had moved.
Only slightly.
His head remained bowed, eyes still closed beneath the silver-streaked hair hanging across his face, but the fingers of his left hand had curled inside the restraint. The wrist chain that had been perfectly straight seconds before now trembled beneath increasing tension.
Iron creaked.
The bolt securing it to the cage shifted.
One courtier laughed nervously and stopped when no one joined him.
Jinx inhaled.
His nostrils flared.
The left arm pulled again.
This time the entire cage answered with a long metallic shriek.
Men near it moved backward.
The gold cloaks nearest the doors reached for swords before Arthur turned his head toward them, and whatever they saw in his expression convinced them that drawing steel would be the poorest possible response.
Rhaegar remained on one knee.
He did not turn around.
"Father," he said, and there was no triumph in his voice at being proven right. "Please."
Rhaella rose.
The movement drew Aerys's attention immediately.
She had remained quiet throughout Rhaegar's account, hands folded in her lap while her eyes moved repeatedly toward Jinx. Now she came closer to the throne, pale skirts whispering across stone beneath the jagged shadows of a thousand swords.
"If there is even a chance Rhaegar speaks truly, feed him," she urged, keeping her voice low rather than challenging Aerys before the court. Her eyes moved toward the bending chain as another faint groan passed through the room. "Nothing is lost by caution. If the boy is merely hungry, we lose food. If he is what your son says and we refuse him…"
She did not finish.
She did not need to.
Aerys looked irritated by the interruption, though his gaze kept returning to the cage.
Jinx's left wrist pulled another finger's width.
The iron bar began bending.
Tywin moved.
He climbed the first steps toward the throne slowly enough not to appear alarmed, stopping beside Aerys where the court could see him speak but not hear the words. He bent just enough to bring his voice below the king's ear, and whatever he said lasted only several seconds.
Eddard watched Aerys's face.
Suspicion came first.
Then calculation.
The king glanced toward Rhaegar, then Tywin, then the cage. His fingers tapped once against the throne before stopping.
Tywin murmured something more.
Aerys's mouth tightened.
For an instant Eddard thought pride would win.
Then Jinx moved his head.
Only an inch.
His face turned toward the nearest cluster of courtiers.
His eyes remained closed.
He sniffed.
Half the people standing there recoiled.
Aerys saw them.
That seemed to decide it.
"Very well," the king snapped, making the concession sound like an order he had intended all along. He leaned forward against the Iron Throne while irritation sharpened every word. "Feed him. If the boy requires enough food for five men, bring enough for fifty and let us see whether northern appetites are as impressive as northern tales."
Rhaegar exhaled.
The breath seemed to leave Arthur, Barristan, Eddard, and Brandon with him.
Aerys pointed toward a steward whose face had gone almost as white as Rhaella's hair. "Empty the kitchens if you must. Meat first. Beef, mutton, pork, fowl—whatever has already been butchered. Bread, broth, blood if the cooks have it. Bring all of it here."
The steward ran.
Another followed before anyone told him to.
Rhaella watched them go, then looked toward Jinx again.
The chain had stopped moving.
Not because he had settled.
Because his sleeping face had turned toward the doors through which the servants had fled.
He could smell the kitchens.
Eddard knew it before anyone else did.
So did Rhaegar.
Neither man relaxed.
Around them, the court slowly began whispering again, quieter this time, while servants somewhere beyond the great doors shouted orders down corridors and cooks discovered that the king had just commanded enough food for a feast to be carried into the throne room.
Jinx remained asleep inside his cage.
His left hand stayed wrapped around the chain.
The iron beneath it was no longer straight.