Nerd In the North 6-29

“Looo~oook! Listen! Hey! Listen!”

The ball of white went round over the crown of Gwenna’s hair twice over, fast enough the light dragged with it; a glass-bright chime came back off the high ceiling and hit her again on the way down.

“Yes, Vivi. I hear ye.”

“Listen! There’s too much lye being used on the linens! Fibers are wearing down, Gwenna!” The light darted down, afloat over the bridge of the girl’s nose. “And that terrible draft in the western storeroom is still there! When are you going to fix that? You should fix it! Damp brings rot! Loook at me when I’m saving your root vegetables!”

“Aye…” Gwenna let out a breath that hung white in the corridor. “Aye, Vivi. I hear ye. I heard ye the first three times.”

“Listen!”

“Ah’m listening, ye daft little star.” Two fingers held tight on the bridge of her nose, pressing down as she tried to fight the ache behind her eyes. The little light wasn’t wrong, at least about the lye. 

Old Hessa had been at the washing since before Gwenna’s mam was born and had taken over the task upon coming to the keep. The woman had never once measured a thing in her life, just tipping it in by the bucketful and calling it clean. Need to fix that…

And that draft — she knew it was the shutter, a split in the window frame Bertram kept telling her he’d see to. She’d have to see to it with a closer eye, then, because that was the job of a lady, it seemed.

To do anything and everything.

And to think she once thought noble ladies simply ate and rested on their soft beds all day. Da never had this much to do.

Gwenna sighed, the dress shifting around her legs as she made her way down the hall. Thick cloth swished over the white stone blocks beneath her feet, an expensive rustle of white on white.

All white.

Near everything she wore was white now.

Her mam had gone through near every piece of blue in her wardrobe and put them aside as if they were no good. ‘Your lord’s colors, Gwenna, and don’t you say a word.’ Six months of needlework, half of it done squinting by candlelight and the woman had trimmed everything white she had with blue. This dress was like so many others she wore daily, a blinding white with a blue trim as bright as a summer sky bordering the sleeves and the high collar. It was no less fancy than the highborn ladies still held in the guest wing of the brightfort, a light silk lined with heavy cotton and wool — fancy, fine and far too impractical for a girl who had grown up with root dirt packed under her fingernails.

But she wasn’t that girl anymore.

No, not any longer.

She was Lady Gwenevere of the Brightfort now. The White Witch.

That last one she’d caught often and heard several times in a fortnight; hushed words bouncing over the courtyard, echoing up from the kitchens, and passed back and forth over washing tubs when the women thought she couldn’t hear.

Yet, there was little fear in the name, and far from any disdain.

That she could hold onto.

It was among many names she’d heard over the time Lord Veder had been gone, a better part of a year without him. Her Bright Lord had been swallowed up by the South as he’d dived headfirst into its wars and had left the Brightlands and its people in her hands, Gwenna forced to handle disputes, requests for work, and counts over grain and livestock.

All of it was brought to her, grown men doing as she bid without so much as a raised brow.

Yet, her own brow had risen many a time, mouth falling open in shock too. The ravens that landed at the Brightfort had made certain of that; everyone shaken by the news that had been brought to the keep.

King Robb was dead, killed by men who’d knelt to him.

Her feet took her past the thick oak door in the guest wing, slippers slowing without her meaning to. The silence from that door was a constant thing, the boy behind it refusing to come out since the black wings had paid white walls a visit. He barely touched what the kitchens sent to his room, and wouldn’t give the maester even a word. 

Nay, he simply sat in the dark with that wolf of his laid out at his bedside.

A boy with legs that worked and nowhere he aimed to walk to.

A sudden slap of bare feet against stone shook her from her thoughts, a low animal sound echoing off the stairs as something shattered against the ground. “Get back here!”

The youngest Stark came round the hall at a dead run on all fours, hair grown out into a bloody mane and half his face blackened with soot. Right at his side, a matted wall of fur took the corner wide, green eyes blazing as claws skidded against stone. A servant flattened herself against the wall just in time to avoid being barrelled over, the bread on her tray held tight.

Even still, one fell to the floor and Rickon Stark was quick to pick it up; the young lord placing it in his teeth without losing a step. The boy acted more direwolf than lord, and grieved with all the mindfulness of the former as he spent his days tearing through the halls of the Brightfort.

All through the keep, day and night, the boy and his monster did what they would.

Poor little lords. Gwenna watched both turn another corner, Rickon somehow managing to keep up or the wolf knowing enough to slow his pace. Kings of naught now.

"Hey! The girls! Waaait!" Vivi’s chime stole her attention again, the fairy spinning through the hall with a trail of light sparkling behind her. That same light stretched round the other end of the hall as the little creature took off, voice vanishing off into the distance. “The girls are praaaaacticing!”

Gwenna sighed, but followed after.

The chanting reached her before she reached it, the Hall of Magic full of noise and color both.

Five and ten girls — the whole of the Sisterhood — stood out across the floor in their usual rows and every dress on them the opposite of hers; blue with white trim. Mam’s work.

Hers, or one of the women she’d took under her and bullied into following what she said.

Vivi darted around the Hall, surrounded by fifteen other lights; every girl blessed with a fairy to call their own. The air was near thick with the daft little things in all sorts of colours — one green, another the color of a pale rose, a third the same shade as a winter rose, and another no different from a golden dragon. All of them chimed over the girl’s heads while the sisters worked their cantrips beneath them, Lord Veder’s grimoires open on tables for all to read from.

All of the sisters, at least.

"Set yer mind, keep th’ eyes, an’ hold yer heart!"

Mara’s voice was sharp and strong as it carried the length of the hall, a burst of brilliant blue alighting from the girl’s fingers and expanding with a snap like thunder into a shield of light you could see the far wall through.
Gwenna held herself in the archway, hands at her waist, as she smiled at it all. Magic taking root in the Brightfort was a beautiful thing and it had only grown over the past year.

And not simply for the Sisterhood, either.

Down below, in the mud of the training yard, the younger arms-boys — both smallfolk and those of higher birth — had already begun manifesting miracles of their own after months of bloody training with the few of Lord Greg’s personal vanguard left behind.

Not the spells of her girls, of course, but magicks all the same. 

A wilder, rougher thing, it bled into strength of arm, fleet of foot, and blades that burned and hummed with force and light that no mere skill could explain. After all, what simple training let you knock back a grown man or leave the air smelling like heated metal after you swung a sword?

And, of course, the lights had found them too.

The boys had even had the idea of forming their own brotherhood, inspired by tales the lord had mentioned to them; of guilds and adventure. A Brotherhood of Battle…

Gwenna shook her head at the thought as she crossed the hall, eyes aimed out the tall window of perfectly clear glass. Her dragon-ring clicked against the pane as she stared out past the walls, over the grey pines, to where a thick tree rose above everything eose.

One simple day, there was a trunk broader than the stables standing in the place of where simple forest used to be and around it a garden green as summer with the frost pushed six paces away from the warmth of the grass. Tybald, the keep’s fat maester, had nearly gone into a fit trying to make sense of it; a great many words used to explain nothing.

The garden and that tree had served as home of the fairies and many more still resided there within its branches, shining bright in the night. While many murmured and called it a gift of the Old Gods, Gwenna knew whose doing this was. 

He leaves pieces of himself. Her ring sat warm against her finger as a constant reminder, after all, and the hall was filled with the many he had blessed with his own knowledge. To keep us while he’s gone.

“M’lady!”

Her quiet thoughts barely lasted a few short moments before they were interrupted, Gwenna forced to turn as the hall quieted around her. “Lady Gwenevere!”

Eren stood in the archway, satchel over his shoulder as he worked the wool-lined hem of his tunic. The darkness under both eyes were as deep as she had ever seen on him, the steward working as often into the night as her man; both intent on supporting her.

And she would not let them down.

“Eren.” The lady’s voice sat her shoulders like a heavy cloak. “What is it?”

“News!” He dropped his voice a moment, suddenly awre of all the eyes on him. Smallfolk they may have been, the people of the Brightlands made sure to show respect for her Sisters, near as much as they did her. “A m-messenger from Harrow Ford! In the yard!”

Before Gwenna could open her mouth again, the yard below went up with the sounds of shouting and a house clattering in hard on wet cobbles.

Gwenna didn’t bother to excuse herself, two fists of white cloth held tight as her slippers slapped stone as fast as she could make them.

“Trouble?” At her side, as always, was Vivi.

“...I hope not.”

The doors to the main hall opened in front of her, the cold entering her lungs all at once.

The messenger Eren had spoken of was halfway out of his saddle already, the man closer to falling than dismounting. His horse fared little better, head down and mouth ringed white with froth.

"Give him water!" The command left her mouth before anyone could so much as bow at the sight of her. “Get them both something to drink!”

Two of the guards caught the man under the arms, mere moments before his legs would have failed him. “What news? Is it Karstark?”

“Winterfell…” The messenger got a swallow off a waterskin shoved in his mouth, the second spilling down his chin and onto his tunic. “Winterfell has fallen.”

Gwenna blinked, staring in open confusion as she fought to keep her mouth from hanging open like a dullard. “...again?”

“The K-Karstarks… they took the keep in full. Ironmen… all slaughtered to a man, m’lady.”

That… That was good news, no? The Brightlands had been fighting those few scattered reavers that had made it past Winterfell and the others who aimed to attack from the direction of the water.

If not good, then certainly not… bad?

“Theon Turncloak had the castle held with the salt-bastards.” Eren came up at her shoulder, the man’s brow pulled low. “How could they break so easily?”

“Th’ Turncloak’s not been seen since King Robb was killed.”

"Not been seen?" Gwenna held to those words. "How? Killed or craven?"

"I couldn't say, m'lady, only that no man's seen him in some time." The man’s eyes weren’t fixed on Gwenna or anything else in truth, speaking as if only to the waterskin. “And with the lead squid gone, the Drowned God’s m-magic… it’s been said to wane for a half-moon. Some said it was weakening with the tide, but the water’s too still for a wane. Th’ drowned men died like normal men when the swords took ‘em. Whole of them…dead”

The messenger shook his head after another swallow. “And now Karstark’s aiming for the rest of the North, they say.”

Aiming for the rest of the North. It was no simple aim but with three houses worth of men, and many more smaller names beneath them as well, it was far from a mere dream.

And, to make things worse, they were not so far away at all. A half-moon’s ride from Winterfell at most, and half that at a hard pace. …damn them.

Gwenna stood in the cold, ring warm on her hand as her white cloths pulled heavy at the hem where she’d dragged them through the wet and snow. “Get him inside.” She spoke the words through teeth clenched tight. “And see to that horse lest it finds its way to the kitchens.”

The men did just that, Eren standing still at her side as the yard emptied.

“Hey!” Vivi came down and settled on her shoulder, light of her gone dim enough that Gwenna could look straight at the fairy. "What do we do now?"