GOT: The Great — Chapter 290 - Pray to More Gods, and More Gods Will Protect You

Petyr Baelish walked into Winterfell without a single guard.

He came through the gatehouse alone, snow clinging to his grey wool cloak, boots caked with mud.

He knelt on one knee before Drogo and lowered his head.

"My king."

Drogo looked down at him.

Littlefinger's hairline had receded a little further since they'd last met. The hair on top of his head was combed immaculately, grey threaded through white.

"You show up after we've already finished the fighting. That's not a great look for sincerity."

Littlefinger raised his head, smile already in place.

"It is precisely because of Your Majesty's divine valor that the Boltons surrendered so quickly. Had you not ridden a dragon here, my timing would have been just right."

Drogo stared at him for two seconds, wanting to snap back, and finding no angle to do it.

The words were airtight. Flattery delivered clean, with the excuse for being late folded neatly inside it.

"Have your men search the area around Winterfell for any remaining Bolton soldiers. Priority is finding Ramsay's whereabouts."

"As you command, my king."

Littlefinger rose, gave a small bow, and turned to leave. Drogo stopped him.

"One more thing. Tywin sent you to Braavos — how did those talks go?"

Littlefinger turned back. The smile was still there, but the set of his shoulders shifted, just slightly.

"I had no choice in the matter, Your Majesty. The Hand of the King gave the order. I had no choice but to obey."

"I didn't ask whether you had a choice," Drogo said. "I asked what you discussed with the Sea Lord, and how it turned out."

Littlefinger folded his hands in front of him. His thumbs circled each other slowly.

"As you have seen, Braavos refused to help Tywin. The crown owes the Iron Bank a considerable debt, and Queen Mother Cersei has refused to repay it. Under those circumstances, the Sea Lord didn't even want to look at me."

"Is that the truth? Even with you personally making the case, it still fell through?"

"Absolutely, Your Majesty. No one wishes to stand on the side of the losing party. And the war in Westeros has little to do with the Free Cities to begin with."

Drogo studied Littlefinger for a moment, looking for a crack in that face.

He found nothing.

"Go."

Littlefinger gave another small bow. When he turned and walked away this time, his pace was a little quicker than before.

Drogo watched him pass through the gatehouse and disappear into the shadow of the wall.

With business concluded, Drogo began touring Winterfell alongside Sansa.

She walked ahead, Margaery holding her arm.

The two moved side by side through Winterfell's ruined streets, skirting the burned-out stable, stepping over fallen beams, never once letting go of each other's hands.

Drogo followed a few paces behind, watching their linked arms and the way their heads occasionally drew close together.

He had known they were acquainted. He just hadn't expected them to grow this close after becoming something like sisters.

Back in King's Landing, those two were always together, Missandei was forever at Daenerys's side, and Scarlett never quite attached herself to either group.

Five women. Three factions. Quite something.

Eventually they reached the godswood.

It was the only part of Winterfell that hadn't burned.

The air was far quieter here than outside. The trees held the wind back, leaving only the soft, muffled crunch of feet pressing into snow.

The weirwood's trunk bore an ancient carved face.

Sansa stopped beneath the tree. She tilted her head back to look at the face in the bark, her hood slipping down to her back, a few strands of red hair blown loose and pressed against her cheeks.

"After my mother was resurrected under the blessing of the Lord of Light, I rarely came to the godswood," she said, her voice quiet. "And yet I still find myself drawn here. Father always prayed in this place."

Drogo stood beside her and glanced at the heart tree.

"They say the more gods you pray to, the more gods will protect you. No harm in stopping by once in a while."

Margaery asked, "Where does that saying come from?"

Drogo didn't answer her.

Sansa heard him and asked, "Can the Old Gods hear our prayers?"

"Whether the Old Gods still exist, I can't say," Drogo said. "But the Three-Eyed Raven might be watching this very conversation through the heart tree right now."

"The Three-Eyed Raven?" Both women spoke at once.

"Since you ask so sincerely, I'll be generous and tell you."

Sansa furrowed her brow.

"The Three-Eyed Raven is a greenseer. Found among northerners with First Men blood, and among the wildlings beyond the Wall."

"In every thousand people, there is a chance one skinchanger will be born — and above the skinchanger stands the far more powerful greenseer."

"Where a skinchanger communicates with animals, a greenseer can communicate with nature itself. With the world itself."

"The greenseer is the most powerful of all skinchangers — capable of slipping into the consciousness of any living creature, and of forming a connection with the weirwood trees."

"Through the weirwood, a greenseer can see across a thousand miles. They can even look back into the past."

He paused, eyes on the heart tree's terrible carved face.

"Bran Stark will ultimately become a greenseer."

The woods fell quiet. Wind blew a dusting of snow off the treetops, and it settled on Sansa's shoulder.

Margaery looked at Drogo.

"You are truly learned, nothing like anything I had ever heard about you. You are the most intelligent man I have ever met."

Drogo looked down at her. Transparently false, every word of it. Tyrells handed out compliments the way other people breathed, no thought required. But they were pleasant to hear all the same.

Sansa wasn't looking at him. She was still watching the heart tree. Raised under Ned Stark's hand, she was as blunt as ever:

"How do you know any of this? Things that even northerners don't know. You haven't just made all of it up, have you."

Drogo glanced at Sansa. Then at Margaery.

One still frowning. The other still watching him with soft, warm eyes.

The contrast was stark enough that he couldn't help but laugh a little, somewhere inside.

Back on the Dothraki Sea, whenever someone asked how he knew the things he knew, he'd say it was a prophecy of the Great Stallion.

In Westeros, he wasn't going to bother with excuses.

"I know everything," he said.

Sansa pursed her lips and looked away. Margaery kept watching him, the corner of her mouth curving upward.

Drogo raised his head.

The face carved into the heart tree's bark looked down at him, sap seeping from the eye sockets like two endless streams of tears that would never run dry.

He truly could not bring himself to tell them. That both of them were characters written by a man named Martin.

That their fates had been decided long ago.

The Little Rose, burned to death in the Great Sept of Baelor. Killed by Cersei's wildfire.

Sansa, tortured half to death by the Flayed Man.

Had I not appeared here and changed so many things, neither of you would be where you are now.

He couldn't say it.

The snow began to fall again. Flakes settled on his shoulders, settled on the heart tree's silent face, melting slowly and mixing with the sap, running down the trunk in thin rivulets, dripping one drop at a time into the frozen earth below.

➤ Next: Bran Starts Stirring Things Up