Ch 30 Retribution
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LazyWizard
Know what you're doing yet?
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"Please... No more..." The goldcloak's voice cracked. Snot and tears ran down his face, mixing with the blood running across his cheeks. "Just... kill... me."
The rope he had used on the woman was now tied around his hands and legs, forcing his half-naked body upright in the wobbly chair.
"I want to kill you too," Jon sighed as he ripped out the blade from the man's thigh, making him scream and thrash in agony. "But what can I do when you are so determined to protect your masters by refusing to give me the answers I want? I do admire your spirit and loyalty, though."
"I-I don't want to protect anyone." He sobbed out in frustration. "I-I told you everything I know... Please, I am not lying..."
"But what you told me doesn't make much sense, does it?" Jon picked up a scrap of the man's clothing from the floor and began methodically cleaning the dagger, deciding to let him breathe for a few seconds. "Just because I defeated him in the lists, Ser Meryn Trant, a mighty Kingsguard, decided he wanted me killed." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Do you not hear how foolish that is? It's not as if he's a prodigy who's never been defeated before."
"B-But that's what he told me," he cried out in despair, his voice broken with pain and the indignation of someone being wronged.
The man had tried threatening and coercing the boy at first, invoking the name of the commander of the city watch, and how he was related to Lannisters. But the moment the boy began cutting off his fingers, he had realised that mercy was never coming. He wasn't leaving this place alive.
So, having been a coward his whole life, a little bit of pain was enough for him to start spilling his guts about everything he knew— truthfully.
But his answers didn't satisfy him...
"Then maybe he lied." Jon shrugged while throwing away the rag to reveal a gleaming Valyrian steel dagger. "You'll just have to think harder about what the true intent could have been... Who was the hand behind your master? Go back through your memories. Perhaps you'll remember a detail you missed."
"I can't..." The man's eyes squeezed shut. "I don't remember... anything."
Jon sighed. "It seems you're still not trying hard enough. Well, we still have three fingers left, so that should help."
He rolled his shoulder.
"And if that's not enough, there are still your ears, nose, and eyes." The calmness with which the boy counted his organs chilled the goldcloak. "So perhaps, by the end, you'll start remembering things. But make sure you do it before we reach your tongue, though, or it will be too unfortunate if you knew the answer but couldn't speak."
Jon snickered at his own joke.
"No, please, no, no, I beg you." The man strained against the ropes as Jon stepped closer. "Please, have merc—ARHHH!"
Jon pressed the dagger against the man's finger and then began sawing... slowly.
The goldcloak squirmed against the ropes, making the blade jerk and bite deeper.
Halfway through, Jon removed the dagger and began twisting the dangling finger left and right, rotating it again and again until it finally tore off clean.
"Should have thought of it when you decided to throw the innocent in between your two friends to assault her." Jon cleaned the knife as he stood up and shifted to the other hand.
"Even the gods wouldn't forgive a beast like you." The dagger settled on a new finger. "So really, you are just taking a head start on your punishment..."
"NO! No more—ARGH!!"
Again and again, he screamed, each cry growing weaker until only a hoarse rasp remained.
"Think, my friend, think." Jon's hand didn't waver for a single moment as he continued without any expression.
When he had left Winterfell, Jon had barely been older than twelve, and over his long journey the next few years he had been to hundreds of different towns and cities; from the brutal snow-capped villages of True North to the nomad tribes in Essos, he had seen everything.
And along the way, he had come across all sorts of inhuman atrocities.
He had witnessed wildlings starving in the snow, willing to slit a child's throat for a day's meal.
Ironborn laughing as they dragged women from burning huts while their children screamed for their mothers.
Pirates joking amongst themselves as they sacked innocent villages and then divided the surviving families as spoils.
Petty nobles hanging entire families over a perceived insult, or simply because they found it amusing.
He had killed them all later, of course.
But what was lost could never come back.
And at first, he would wonder how a man could look into the eyes of a terrified woman, or hear a child begging for his father to be spared, and still carry on without hesitation.
He had stopped asking that question a long time ago.
Different men. Different lands. Different reasons.
The cruelty was always the same.
Whatever naivety he had carried from his old world had been stripped away somewhere along that bloody road, layer by layer, until there was almost nothing left of it.
So now, as the man before him squirmed beneath his hands in torment, Jon felt no disgust. No hesitation.
After all, he had seen much worse.
"Think, friend, think, and you can save yourself..."
His whisper carried over the screams as his dagger went for the left ear.
"ARHH!!"
The goldcloak's back slammed against the chair. His head thrashed from side to side, but the movement only seemed to make the pain worse. When the ear was finally torn free, his body sagged for a moment, almost in relief.
Then Jon stepped forward again.
"Think back, remember, and the pain will all go away..."
The dagger moved towards the right eye.
"NO, no—AHH!!"
His head jerked away, but the dagger still found its mark.
The scream that followed lasted only for a few moments before it dissolved into choking, broken sounds as his entire body convulsed against the chair.
His heels hammered against the floor as he struggled to escape the pain, but there was nowhere for him to run.
"Remember, and you can rid yourself of—"
Jon's dagger began heading towards the other eye.
But at the last moment, the man shook his head violently and screamed, "I r-remember! I remember now!"
"Truly?" Jon blinked in surprise.
"I saw them... during the tourney. They were talking about you... and Margaery."
He swallowed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Yes, I remember now. He said... he said you were bothering her. Called you a sinister bastard... said you were beguiling the innocent rose with your cunning."
The man winced, his missing ear ringing with a constant, loud, piercing noise.
"Said the Tyrells were too afraid of the Northerners to do anything about it." He sucked in a shaky breath. "Said it was a waste... that the beautiful rose of Highgarden would be tainted by a lowly bastard like you."
Jon's eyes narrowed.
"Who said those words?"
"Baelish."
The answer came instantly.
"It was Baelish."
The man grasped at the name as if it was the only thing between him and death. "They were sitting in the stands. I was below their platform, taking shelter from the sun. They must not have seen me. Ser Meryn was there too, guarding them. Baelish said all those things to him. I swear it. So it had to be him who ordered it."
Jon stared at him.
"Let me guess... It was a prince he was speaking to."
"Yes, Prince Joffrey."
"Fuck!"
Jon cursed as he turned away with a grimace.
From the instant he had heard Baelish's name, Jon had realised where this was going, and sure enough, that brat was the easiest mark available for that snake to manipulate.
Jon had focused his spies on the letters Baelish sent, the people he met in his brothel and at his home.
He should have known that the bastard didn't only have his money and his network of spies; his silver tongue was equally deadly, especially when paired with a spoiled brat.
He had been so focused on Tywin, Olenna, Cersei, Martells, the so-called big players, that he had completely overlooked that malicious little beast strutting around with his nose in the air.
After all, what could a 12-year-old impulsive brat do to him, even if he had the authority of the prince?
'Did I really make the same mistake that everyone else did in the books?'
Jon rubbed his forehead with a helpless expression.
How could he, even after knowing that the bastard was responsible for so much of the mayhem in the original book, look down on him and not pay him any attention?
'Shit! Am I following in the footsteps of Ned from the books?'
A constipated expression appeared on his face as the thought passed through his head.
Eddard and Catelyn had spent the better part of the first book searching for the culprit behind Bran's attempted assassination, turning the city upside down, accusing everyone and their mother, never thinking for a second that the one behind it could have been an impulsive brat whose mother never taught him that actions had consequences.
'Ah! This is fucking embarrassing...'
This was the first time he had felt so stupid in this second life, and he did not like the feeling one bit.
Perhaps, subconsciously, he had been averse to looking at the brat as if he were any kind of threat, because those he considered a threat were eventually going to end up dead...
And killing a twelve-year-old boy—basically a child—no matter what kind of monster he was supposed to become in the future, would make any sane person hesitate.
After all, he was still relatively normal and hadn't taken any lives, as far as Jon knew...
And while he wasn't Batman with a no-kill rule, he also knew that once he crossed that line, there was no coming back.
'But now...'
The first shot had already been fired by the brat, so he was no longer innocent.
Which meant...
'No mercy.' He nodded with a determined expression before turning around.
"Tell me everything you remember about that conversation..."
...
"The screams have stopped," Lena mumbled against her husband's chest.
For the first time in what felt like eternity, her body was beginning to loosen in his arms, though in truth barely half an hour had passed since the ordeal.
The trembling hadn't vanished entirely—every so often, a shudder still ran through her when she closed her eyes—but it no longer shook her to the bone.
Her husband's warmth seeped into her, and the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek gave her something to listen to, and the terrors held less power while she was so close to him.
"Have they?" Marynd stilled and listened for a few heartbeats. Sure enough, the muffled screams that had been a constant since the door to the warehouse closed were gone.
"He should be coming out now. We need to get up."
They were sitting on the floor against the wall of the warehouse. The alley was deserted enough that they had been left in peace, with no one passing by.
"Mm."
Lena nodded but remained where she was for almost another minute before finally, reluctantly, standing. Even then, she kept her fingers locked with his.
"Is he really 15 years old?" she asked in a whisper while staring at the door with a dazed expression.
"I think. But don't worry, he is not as scary as he seems," Marynd hurried to explain, assuming that the agonising screams from the past half an hour would leave a bad impression of Jon. "If it weren't for him, I would have never been able to find you. He helped me so much even when he didn't have to, so... I hope you don't think badly of him."
"He is Jon Snow; why would I think badly of him?" Lena turned to him with a strange expression, confusion in her eyes.
"You know him?"
The knight was taken aback; he had been thinking of all sorts of explanations to make his wife not be scared of this fifteen-year-old monster, who was casually torturing a man for half an hour, even thinking of invoking Lady Margaery's name, that he was her lover or something, only to find...
"Who doesn't?" She shook her head. "He is the most famous knight in the tourney. The crowd goes wild every time he appears for a bout, with the womenfolk always screaming the loudest. Some of the noble women even think that he is more handsome than Ser Loras. A lot more manly, they believe."
She lowered her voice, as if sharing some scandalous secret.
"Ah, since you stay back at the mansion to guard whenever we leave for the Tourney, you probably haven't seen him compete, but he really is talented."
"I don't doubt that."
Marynd glanced at his wife.
The enthusiasm in her voice seemed a little excessive.
"And to think he rushed all the way here just to save me..." An excited gleam appeared in her eyes. "Oh, I wonder how jealous those shrews would get when I tell them that."
"Hey, I came to save you too," the knight murmured while poking his wife's shoulder.
"Huh?" The woman turned, and her heart immediately melted when she noticed the unhappy pout on her husband's face. "O-Of course, you did! But I mean, he helped you a little, right?" She hurriedly patted his arm, not knowing why he would be jealous of a 15-year-old boy as a married man.
"I guess..." Marynd admitted reluctantly. "But don't go telling your friends that he did all the saving, and I wasn't there," he added half-jokingly.
"I won't." Lena nodded, but thinking about those friends made her face fall, and a forlorn expression appeared on her face. "Can we not go back for a while?" she said in a soft voice.
"Why?"
"I... It's the servant woman; I knew her," she tightened her fingers on his shirt.
"I had seen her many times before, and she always greeted me with a smile. But then, knowing that she was the one who led me to think that you were out there waiting for me, I..."
Her voice broke. She hugged him tighter.
She came from a small noble family in the Reach, and when she had been chosen to serve the Tyrells, her relatives had told her many tales about how treacherous the lives of high nobles could become.
But she had never imagined that someone could do something so cruel without so much a change in expression.
"We won't," the knight was quick to assure her. "We will stay away for as long as you want..." he hesitated. "Though... I don't think we could go back even if we wanted to," he admitted with a bitter smile.
"Huh?" Lena pulled back to look at him. "Why?"
"I..." Marynd looked down. "I may have done some bad things along the way..."
He then told her everything that happened after her kidnapping.
"You threatened Lady Margaery?" Lena asked, looking shocked and frightened.
Even knowing that he had done it because they were threatening him with her life didn't make it much better, because she knew it wouldn't matter to those high nobles.
"I-I didn't threaten her... I just wanted Jon Snow," he conceded in a small voice.
But even as he said them, Marynd knew how hollow the excuse sounded. Once he led the two of them into danger, what those men did afterwards was already beyond his control.
'He could be hanged for this.'
The colour drained from Lena's face as she remembered all the horror stories she had heard about what had happened to those who betrayed their masters. "S-Should we run away?"
"Ah, don't worry, it hasn't reached that point yet." The knight hastily grabbed her shaking hands. "On the way here, Jon told me that Lady Margaery didn't intend to blame me too much for this... and that they intended to keep these things a secret from everyone else."
'It's Lady Margaery I am worried about.'
Lena bit her lip anxiously; she knew that even if their Lady was kind enough not to blame him, it wouldn't matter in the end, because the true decision lay in the hands of Lady Olenna, and she...
Lena shuddered, but before their discussion could go any further, the warehouse door sprang open, and Jon came out with a thoughtful frown on his face.
"Huh? You're still here?" he asked when he noticed the two standing before him, having expected them to have taken off a long time ago.
"Did you forget the way back?" he asked as he closed the door behind him.
But the brief opening had given the knight a glimpse into the darkness inside, and what he saw chilled him to his bones.
Fingers lay strewn across the floor. Ears had been cut away. One eye was nothing more than a hollow socket. Somehow, the man in the chair was still twitching every now and then.
A massive slash across his stomach had left his guts spilling out.
He wasn't long for this world.
And judging by the way his body still jerked, his last few breaths were going to be spent in agony.
Marynd swallowed.
Sure, he knew the man deserved it.
But Seven... the boy was ruthless.
"Um, we wanted to thank you." Lena stepped forward when her husband only stared blankly at him.
"You've helped us so much, despite having no obligation to do so. Especially after hearing what happened between you and Marynd."
She clasped her hands together.
"Your chivalry knows no bounds, Ser."
"Don't mind it." Jon waved his hand. "They came after me, so I was bound to go after them, either way. And you can just call me Jon; I am not a knight."
"But you will become one, come tomorrow, when you win the Tourney, right?" She smiled with full dimples on both cheeks.
A sight which made Jon's eyebrow twitch as his eyes went to her stomach and back to her face.
"How old are you, again?"
He hadn't paid attention when he'd glanced her way in the dark, but now...
"Um, 19." Lena looked confused at the strange question.
'Damn! Those fuckers died an easy death!'
Jon grimaced.
A girl who was essentially still a teenager had just gone through something like that, especially while pregnant...
He shook his head and turned to the knight.
"Let's go; I'll take you two back."
He nodded and was about to lead the way when he noticed them exchanging uncomfortable glances and realised. "Oh, right, you can't go back there, can you?"
Jon scratched his head.
They hadn't stayed because they couldn't find their way, but because they were scared of what would happen to them when they returned.
"Hm. How about this? You two just come with me to my brother's place for now, and I'll see if I can sort things out with Margaery and her grandmother. If it works out, then it's good. And if it doesn't..." He shrugged. "Well, you can always come work for me."
"But..." Marynd gripped the hilt of his sword with a hesitant expression.
He was a Reach knight. It would be rude, dishonourable even, not to return to accept his punishment after committing such a blunder.
But unlike him, Lena didn't hesitate in the slightest.
"Thank you, Ser Jon. Thank you. We will follow right after you," she bowed with a smile as she forcefully pulled her reluctant husband along.
"Oh, don't look so glum, friend." Jon slapped the knight hard on the back. "If things go the way I am hoping, then perhaps you may have the chance to serve your mistress again, even while working for me." He winked mischievously. "If you catch my drift."
...
The Next Day.
"Hurry up, you dolt! Or we'll miss everything!"
At last, the persistent clanging from inside the shop finally came to a stop.
A few seconds later, a broad-shouldered young boy, tall enough that he had to duck to exit the entrance, appeared while wiping his blackened face with a dirty rag, which he then promptly shoved into his pocket.
"What was the rush?" Gendry joined his young friend, who carried flour dust all over his shirt. "The bouts shouldn't start for at least another two hours, right? We have plenty of time—"
"Plenty of time?!"
The baker shrieked loud enough that Gendry had to cover his ears. "You stupid bull! Don't you know it's the finals?! The finals!" He hollered as he grabbed his arm and hauled him down the Street of Steel towards Fishmonger Square. "We'll be lucky if we manage to find a place to stand outside and listen to the cheers if we went at your pace!"
"Fine, fine. No need to scream." Gendry wiped the saliva off his face.
"What were you doing in there anyway? Didn't your master give the apprentices the day off?"
"He did. But Gared asked me for help with his unfinished halberd. It's due tomorrow, and I didn't want to leave it halfway through, before being forced to work through the night."
"That lazy merchant's son? Why in the Seven Hells would you want to do his work?" The baker glanced sideways at him. "You are at least getting paid, right?"
"...No."
"You..." The baker was left speechless. "Then why the fuck would you do it?"
"Because I've never worked on a halberd before, and this was a great chance to—"
"To learn, yes, yes. As if I haven't heard that before." He sighed and shook his head. "You are a strange one, Gendry."
It had always been like this with this brute; all of them worked to earn a living while this bull earned so that he could do even more work.
The baker sighed again, deciding there was little point arguing with this strange fellow.
He gave up on the conversation and focused instead on pushing through the surging crowd.
Almost 9 out of 10 were headed towards the city gates.
But the route everyone took was different, as they all felt that they knew the shortest path through the least crowded alleys, which obviously led to even more congestion.
Voices overlapped from all directions: friends calling to one another, families shouting to keep together, hawkers trying to make themselves heard over the din. Carts and carriages added their own clatter as they struggled to force their way through the stubborn crowd.
Men argued over who would win, Tyrell or Snow. Boys shouted the names of their favourite knights, with Ser Barristan, Jon Snow, and, for some reason, the Blackfish being among the most common. Even the guards seemed to have given up trying to keep the streets orderly.
Everywhere Gendry looked, he saw grinning faces and bright eyes.
It felt as if the whole city had woken that morning with the same thought of attending the Tourney.
At first, he had been a little annoyed at being dragged away from his forge so early, but now, with the roar of the crowd growing louder with each step, he felt himself getting swept up in the excitement.
The baker had a point... it would be foolish to miss this.
"Where's the bard? Aren't we waiting for him?" Gendry looked around as the city gates finally came into view.
"Is he any better than you?" The baker snorted as they pushed past a group of loud, gossiping housewives surrounded by their jesting husbands and shouting children.
"I went to his home, but his parents said that he didn't come last night. Probably sleeping it off in a brothel somewhere."
"Again?" Gendry looked back at him with a raised eyebrow as they finally entered the gate area, and their pace slowed down to a crawl, moving only a single step every few minutes. "How much is he raking in to go there so often?"
"At least 10 stags every single night." The baker spread all his fingers wide to show him the amount. "And even more if he was called to one of those bigger taverns. The bastard is so popular these days that he is being paid in advance before even playing anything."
"Advance?!" Gendry was flabbergasted, unable to understand the concept of it. "What if he runs away and doesn't come?"
"He won't; he earns a lot more than that from the tips." The baker looked green with envy. "That's not all; he was bragging a few days ago that a noble maiden who happened to be passing liked his song so much that she threw him a gold dragon."
"A dragon?!" Gendry stopped dead for a few seconds before the pressure from the crowd forced him forward again. "Y-You could buy a fine piece of second-hand armour with that. Why would anyone throw that money away just because they liked a song one could listen to for free?" he asked anxiously, as if it were his own money.
"We shall never understand the world of the rich, my friend," he patted his arm with a sagely expression.
"This is not working. Gendry, raise your hands, and use your size to push through, or else we will be stuck here, and the games will be all over."
"Ugh! Fine!"
"Push!"
..
.
After an excruciatingly long struggle, the two finally managed to squeeze out of the crowd at the gates.
Their view widened as they caught sight of the stands in the distance.
"Finally. Let's hurry to find our usual place. Maybe the seats haven't been occupied—"
"What the fuck's that?"
Gendry stopped in his tracks to stare wide-eyed at the strange gathering in the distance, near the Blackwater Rush.
Dozens of massive white tents were put up in a circle, and through their midst he caught sight of at least a hundred columns of smoke rising into the sky, clearly from food being cooked.
And if that wasn't strange enough, hundreds of grain sacks had been piled up at the entrance, high enough to form a mountain taller than the tents, surrounded by dozens of armed men guarding it vigilantly.
"Oh, I heard about this from my uncle,"
The baker stopped beside him, and they weren't the only ones who noticed, as this strange sight had attracted the attention of most of the passersby heading towards the Tourney grounds. "Apparently ships have been constantly hauling grain into the port over the past two, and then labourers were hired round the clock to carry all these goods here."
"But what for?"
"Open kitchen, I guess..."
"As if." Gendry rolled his eyes. "This is enough to feed thousands upon thousands of people, probably almost everyone who arrived for the tourney, and more. No one rich enough to do this would be that generous."
"Maybe it's the King then. Perhaps he is happy and feels like giving away food to the poor."
"The King?" Gendry scoffed. "Don't be absurd. He'll hold a thousand more tourneys and feasts before he ever thinks of the poor."
"Then, maybe they are just going to sell the food," he shrugged. "They probably believe that everyone would be hungry after the Tourney ends, and decided they could earn a good penny from the crowd."
"And they decided to sell porridge?" Gendry shook his head. "And most smallfolk would stay hungry for a week, and walk home rather than pay someone else for food."
"Then, I don't know." He raised his hands in surrender, while glancing towards the stands. "Forget about it. We will know what it is for soon enough when the Tourney ends."
"Hm." Gendry nodded as he followed after his friend, but for some reason, something about the men around those tents stood out to him.
'Did I see wrong, or were they all Northerners?'
///
The rope he had used on the woman was now tied around his hands and legs, forcing his half-naked body upright in the wobbly chair.
"I want to kill you too," Jon sighed as he ripped out the blade from the man's thigh, making him scream and thrash in agony. "But what can I do when you are so determined to protect your masters by refusing to give me the answers I want? I do admire your spirit and loyalty, though."
"I-I don't want to protect anyone." He sobbed out in frustration. "I-I told you everything I know... Please, I am not lying..."
"But what you told me doesn't make much sense, does it?" Jon picked up a scrap of the man's clothing from the floor and began methodically cleaning the dagger, deciding to let him breathe for a few seconds. "Just because I defeated him in the lists, Ser Meryn Trant, a mighty Kingsguard, decided he wanted me killed." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Do you not hear how foolish that is? It's not as if he's a prodigy who's never been defeated before."
"B-But that's what he told me," he cried out in despair, his voice broken with pain and the indignation of someone being wronged.
The man had tried threatening and coercing the boy at first, invoking the name of the commander of the city watch, and how he was related to Lannisters. But the moment the boy began cutting off his fingers, he had realised that mercy was never coming. He wasn't leaving this place alive.
So, having been a coward his whole life, a little bit of pain was enough for him to start spilling his guts about everything he knew— truthfully.
But his answers didn't satisfy him...
"Then maybe he lied." Jon shrugged while throwing away the rag to reveal a gleaming Valyrian steel dagger. "You'll just have to think harder about what the true intent could have been... Who was the hand behind your master? Go back through your memories. Perhaps you'll remember a detail you missed."
"I can't..." The man's eyes squeezed shut. "I don't remember... anything."
Jon sighed. "It seems you're still not trying hard enough. Well, we still have three fingers left, so that should help."
He rolled his shoulder.
"And if that's not enough, there are still your ears, nose, and eyes." The calmness with which the boy counted his organs chilled the goldcloak. "So perhaps, by the end, you'll start remembering things. But make sure you do it before we reach your tongue, though, or it will be too unfortunate if you knew the answer but couldn't speak."
Jon snickered at his own joke.
"No, please, no, no, I beg you." The man strained against the ropes as Jon stepped closer. "Please, have merc—ARHHH!"
Jon pressed the dagger against the man's finger and then began sawing... slowly.
The goldcloak squirmed against the ropes, making the blade jerk and bite deeper.
Halfway through, Jon removed the dagger and began twisting the dangling finger left and right, rotating it again and again until it finally tore off clean.
"Should have thought of it when you decided to throw the innocent in between your two friends to assault her." Jon cleaned the knife as he stood up and shifted to the other hand.
"Even the gods wouldn't forgive a beast like you." The dagger settled on a new finger. "So really, you are just taking a head start on your punishment..."
"NO! No more—ARGH!!"
Again and again, he screamed, each cry growing weaker until only a hoarse rasp remained.
"Think, my friend, think." Jon's hand didn't waver for a single moment as he continued without any expression.
When he had left Winterfell, Jon had barely been older than twelve, and over his long journey the next few years he had been to hundreds of different towns and cities; from the brutal snow-capped villages of True North to the nomad tribes in Essos, he had seen everything.
And along the way, he had come across all sorts of inhuman atrocities.
He had witnessed wildlings starving in the snow, willing to slit a child's throat for a day's meal.
Ironborn laughing as they dragged women from burning huts while their children screamed for their mothers.
Pirates joking amongst themselves as they sacked innocent villages and then divided the surviving families as spoils.
Petty nobles hanging entire families over a perceived insult, or simply because they found it amusing.
He had killed them all later, of course.
But what was lost could never come back.
And at first, he would wonder how a man could look into the eyes of a terrified woman, or hear a child begging for his father to be spared, and still carry on without hesitation.
He had stopped asking that question a long time ago.
Different men. Different lands. Different reasons.
The cruelty was always the same.
Whatever naivety he had carried from his old world had been stripped away somewhere along that bloody road, layer by layer, until there was almost nothing left of it.
So now, as the man before him squirmed beneath his hands in torment, Jon felt no disgust. No hesitation.
After all, he had seen much worse.
"Think, friend, think, and you can save yourself..."
His whisper carried over the screams as his dagger went for the left ear.
"ARHH!!"
The goldcloak's back slammed against the chair. His head thrashed from side to side, but the movement only seemed to make the pain worse. When the ear was finally torn free, his body sagged for a moment, almost in relief.
Then Jon stepped forward again.
"Think back, remember, and the pain will all go away..."
The dagger moved towards the right eye.
"NO, no—AHH!!"
His head jerked away, but the dagger still found its mark.
The scream that followed lasted only for a few moments before it dissolved into choking, broken sounds as his entire body convulsed against the chair.
His heels hammered against the floor as he struggled to escape the pain, but there was nowhere for him to run.
"Remember, and you can rid yourself of—"
Jon's dagger began heading towards the other eye.
But at the last moment, the man shook his head violently and screamed, "I r-remember! I remember now!"
"Truly?" Jon blinked in surprise.
"I saw them... during the tourney. They were talking about you... and Margaery."
He swallowed, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Yes, I remember now. He said... he said you were bothering her. Called you a sinister bastard... said you were beguiling the innocent rose with your cunning."
The man winced, his missing ear ringing with a constant, loud, piercing noise.
"Said the Tyrells were too afraid of the Northerners to do anything about it." He sucked in a shaky breath. "Said it was a waste... that the beautiful rose of Highgarden would be tainted by a lowly bastard like you."
Jon's eyes narrowed.
"Who said those words?"
"Baelish."
The answer came instantly.
"It was Baelish."
The man grasped at the name as if it was the only thing between him and death. "They were sitting in the stands. I was below their platform, taking shelter from the sun. They must not have seen me. Ser Meryn was there too, guarding them. Baelish said all those things to him. I swear it. So it had to be him who ordered it."
Jon stared at him.
"Let me guess... It was a prince he was speaking to."
"Yes, Prince Joffrey."
"Fuck!"
Jon cursed as he turned away with a grimace.
From the instant he had heard Baelish's name, Jon had realised where this was going, and sure enough, that brat was the easiest mark available for that snake to manipulate.
Jon had focused his spies on the letters Baelish sent, the people he met in his brothel and at his home.
He should have known that the bastard didn't only have his money and his network of spies; his silver tongue was equally deadly, especially when paired with a spoiled brat.
He had been so focused on Tywin, Olenna, Cersei, Martells, the so-called big players, that he had completely overlooked that malicious little beast strutting around with his nose in the air.
After all, what could a 12-year-old impulsive brat do to him, even if he had the authority of the prince?
'Did I really make the same mistake that everyone else did in the books?'
Jon rubbed his forehead with a helpless expression.
How could he, even after knowing that the bastard was responsible for so much of the mayhem in the original book, look down on him and not pay him any attention?
'Shit! Am I following in the footsteps of Ned from the books?'
A constipated expression appeared on his face as the thought passed through his head.
Eddard and Catelyn had spent the better part of the first book searching for the culprit behind Bran's attempted assassination, turning the city upside down, accusing everyone and their mother, never thinking for a second that the one behind it could have been an impulsive brat whose mother never taught him that actions had consequences.
'Ah! This is fucking embarrassing...'
This was the first time he had felt so stupid in this second life, and he did not like the feeling one bit.
Perhaps, subconsciously, he had been averse to looking at the brat as if he were any kind of threat, because those he considered a threat were eventually going to end up dead...
And killing a twelve-year-old boy—basically a child—no matter what kind of monster he was supposed to become in the future, would make any sane person hesitate.
After all, he was still relatively normal and hadn't taken any lives, as far as Jon knew...
And while he wasn't Batman with a no-kill rule, he also knew that once he crossed that line, there was no coming back.
'But now...'
The first shot had already been fired by the brat, so he was no longer innocent.
Which meant...
'No mercy.' He nodded with a determined expression before turning around.
"Tell me everything you remember about that conversation..."
...
"The screams have stopped," Lena mumbled against her husband's chest.
For the first time in what felt like eternity, her body was beginning to loosen in his arms, though in truth barely half an hour had passed since the ordeal.
The trembling hadn't vanished entirely—every so often, a shudder still ran through her when she closed her eyes—but it no longer shook her to the bone.
Her husband's warmth seeped into her, and the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek gave her something to listen to, and the terrors held less power while she was so close to him.
"Have they?" Marynd stilled and listened for a few heartbeats. Sure enough, the muffled screams that had been a constant since the door to the warehouse closed were gone.
"He should be coming out now. We need to get up."
They were sitting on the floor against the wall of the warehouse. The alley was deserted enough that they had been left in peace, with no one passing by.
"Mm."
Lena nodded but remained where she was for almost another minute before finally, reluctantly, standing. Even then, she kept her fingers locked with his.
"Is he really 15 years old?" she asked in a whisper while staring at the door with a dazed expression.
"I think. But don't worry, he is not as scary as he seems," Marynd hurried to explain, assuming that the agonising screams from the past half an hour would leave a bad impression of Jon. "If it weren't for him, I would have never been able to find you. He helped me so much even when he didn't have to, so... I hope you don't think badly of him."
"He is Jon Snow; why would I think badly of him?" Lena turned to him with a strange expression, confusion in her eyes.
"You know him?"
The knight was taken aback; he had been thinking of all sorts of explanations to make his wife not be scared of this fifteen-year-old monster, who was casually torturing a man for half an hour, even thinking of invoking Lady Margaery's name, that he was her lover or something, only to find...
"Who doesn't?" She shook her head. "He is the most famous knight in the tourney. The crowd goes wild every time he appears for a bout, with the womenfolk always screaming the loudest. Some of the noble women even think that he is more handsome than Ser Loras. A lot more manly, they believe."
She lowered her voice, as if sharing some scandalous secret.
"Ah, since you stay back at the mansion to guard whenever we leave for the Tourney, you probably haven't seen him compete, but he really is talented."
"I don't doubt that."
Marynd glanced at his wife.
The enthusiasm in her voice seemed a little excessive.
"And to think he rushed all the way here just to save me..." An excited gleam appeared in her eyes. "Oh, I wonder how jealous those shrews would get when I tell them that."
"Hey, I came to save you too," the knight murmured while poking his wife's shoulder.
"Huh?" The woman turned, and her heart immediately melted when she noticed the unhappy pout on her husband's face. "O-Of course, you did! But I mean, he helped you a little, right?" She hurriedly patted his arm, not knowing why he would be jealous of a 15-year-old boy as a married man.
"I guess..." Marynd admitted reluctantly. "But don't go telling your friends that he did all the saving, and I wasn't there," he added half-jokingly.
"I won't." Lena nodded, but thinking about those friends made her face fall, and a forlorn expression appeared on her face. "Can we not go back for a while?" she said in a soft voice.
"Why?"
"I... It's the servant woman; I knew her," she tightened her fingers on his shirt.
"I had seen her many times before, and she always greeted me with a smile. But then, knowing that she was the one who led me to think that you were out there waiting for me, I..."
Her voice broke. She hugged him tighter.
She came from a small noble family in the Reach, and when she had been chosen to serve the Tyrells, her relatives had told her many tales about how treacherous the lives of high nobles could become.
But she had never imagined that someone could do something so cruel without so much a change in expression.
"We won't," the knight was quick to assure her. "We will stay away for as long as you want..." he hesitated. "Though... I don't think we could go back even if we wanted to," he admitted with a bitter smile.
"Huh?" Lena pulled back to look at him. "Why?"
"I..." Marynd looked down. "I may have done some bad things along the way..."
He then told her everything that happened after her kidnapping.
"You threatened Lady Margaery?" Lena asked, looking shocked and frightened.
Even knowing that he had done it because they were threatening him with her life didn't make it much better, because she knew it wouldn't matter to those high nobles.
"I-I didn't threaten her... I just wanted Jon Snow," he conceded in a small voice.
But even as he said them, Marynd knew how hollow the excuse sounded. Once he led the two of them into danger, what those men did afterwards was already beyond his control.
'He could be hanged for this.'
The colour drained from Lena's face as she remembered all the horror stories she had heard about what had happened to those who betrayed their masters. "S-Should we run away?"
"Ah, don't worry, it hasn't reached that point yet." The knight hastily grabbed her shaking hands. "On the way here, Jon told me that Lady Margaery didn't intend to blame me too much for this... and that they intended to keep these things a secret from everyone else."
'It's Lady Margaery I am worried about.'
Lena bit her lip anxiously; she knew that even if their Lady was kind enough not to blame him, it wouldn't matter in the end, because the true decision lay in the hands of Lady Olenna, and she...
Lena shuddered, but before their discussion could go any further, the warehouse door sprang open, and Jon came out with a thoughtful frown on his face.
"Huh? You're still here?" he asked when he noticed the two standing before him, having expected them to have taken off a long time ago.
"Did you forget the way back?" he asked as he closed the door behind him.
But the brief opening had given the knight a glimpse into the darkness inside, and what he saw chilled him to his bones.
Fingers lay strewn across the floor. Ears had been cut away. One eye was nothing more than a hollow socket. Somehow, the man in the chair was still twitching every now and then.
A massive slash across his stomach had left his guts spilling out.
He wasn't long for this world.
And judging by the way his body still jerked, his last few breaths were going to be spent in agony.
Marynd swallowed.
Sure, he knew the man deserved it.
But Seven... the boy was ruthless.
"Um, we wanted to thank you." Lena stepped forward when her husband only stared blankly at him.
"You've helped us so much, despite having no obligation to do so. Especially after hearing what happened between you and Marynd."
She clasped her hands together.
"Your chivalry knows no bounds, Ser."
"Don't mind it." Jon waved his hand. "They came after me, so I was bound to go after them, either way. And you can just call me Jon; I am not a knight."
"But you will become one, come tomorrow, when you win the Tourney, right?" She smiled with full dimples on both cheeks.
A sight which made Jon's eyebrow twitch as his eyes went to her stomach and back to her face.
"How old are you, again?"
He hadn't paid attention when he'd glanced her way in the dark, but now...
"Um, 19." Lena looked confused at the strange question.
'Damn! Those fuckers died an easy death!'
Jon grimaced.
A girl who was essentially still a teenager had just gone through something like that, especially while pregnant...
He shook his head and turned to the knight.
"Let's go; I'll take you two back."
He nodded and was about to lead the way when he noticed them exchanging uncomfortable glances and realised. "Oh, right, you can't go back there, can you?"
Jon scratched his head.
They hadn't stayed because they couldn't find their way, but because they were scared of what would happen to them when they returned.
"Hm. How about this? You two just come with me to my brother's place for now, and I'll see if I can sort things out with Margaery and her grandmother. If it works out, then it's good. And if it doesn't..." He shrugged. "Well, you can always come work for me."
"But..." Marynd gripped the hilt of his sword with a hesitant expression.
He was a Reach knight. It would be rude, dishonourable even, not to return to accept his punishment after committing such a blunder.
But unlike him, Lena didn't hesitate in the slightest.
"Thank you, Ser Jon. Thank you. We will follow right after you," she bowed with a smile as she forcefully pulled her reluctant husband along.
"Oh, don't look so glum, friend." Jon slapped the knight hard on the back. "If things go the way I am hoping, then perhaps you may have the chance to serve your mistress again, even while working for me." He winked mischievously. "If you catch my drift."
...
The Next Day.
"Hurry up, you dolt! Or we'll miss everything!"
At last, the persistent clanging from inside the shop finally came to a stop.
A few seconds later, a broad-shouldered young boy, tall enough that he had to duck to exit the entrance, appeared while wiping his blackened face with a dirty rag, which he then promptly shoved into his pocket.
"What was the rush?" Gendry joined his young friend, who carried flour dust all over his shirt. "The bouts shouldn't start for at least another two hours, right? We have plenty of time—"
"Plenty of time?!"
The baker shrieked loud enough that Gendry had to cover his ears. "You stupid bull! Don't you know it's the finals?! The finals!" He hollered as he grabbed his arm and hauled him down the Street of Steel towards Fishmonger Square. "We'll be lucky if we manage to find a place to stand outside and listen to the cheers if we went at your pace!"
"Fine, fine. No need to scream." Gendry wiped the saliva off his face.
"What were you doing in there anyway? Didn't your master give the apprentices the day off?"
"He did. But Gared asked me for help with his unfinished halberd. It's due tomorrow, and I didn't want to leave it halfway through, before being forced to work through the night."
"That lazy merchant's son? Why in the Seven Hells would you want to do his work?" The baker glanced sideways at him. "You are at least getting paid, right?"
"...No."
"You..." The baker was left speechless. "Then why the fuck would you do it?"
"Because I've never worked on a halberd before, and this was a great chance to—"
"To learn, yes, yes. As if I haven't heard that before." He sighed and shook his head. "You are a strange one, Gendry."
It had always been like this with this brute; all of them worked to earn a living while this bull earned so that he could do even more work.
The baker sighed again, deciding there was little point arguing with this strange fellow.
He gave up on the conversation and focused instead on pushing through the surging crowd.
Almost 9 out of 10 were headed towards the city gates.
But the route everyone took was different, as they all felt that they knew the shortest path through the least crowded alleys, which obviously led to even more congestion.
Voices overlapped from all directions: friends calling to one another, families shouting to keep together, hawkers trying to make themselves heard over the din. Carts and carriages added their own clatter as they struggled to force their way through the stubborn crowd.
Men argued over who would win, Tyrell or Snow. Boys shouted the names of their favourite knights, with Ser Barristan, Jon Snow, and, for some reason, the Blackfish being among the most common. Even the guards seemed to have given up trying to keep the streets orderly.
Everywhere Gendry looked, he saw grinning faces and bright eyes.
It felt as if the whole city had woken that morning with the same thought of attending the Tourney.
At first, he had been a little annoyed at being dragged away from his forge so early, but now, with the roar of the crowd growing louder with each step, he felt himself getting swept up in the excitement.
The baker had a point... it would be foolish to miss this.
"Where's the bard? Aren't we waiting for him?" Gendry looked around as the city gates finally came into view.
"Is he any better than you?" The baker snorted as they pushed past a group of loud, gossiping housewives surrounded by their jesting husbands and shouting children.
"I went to his home, but his parents said that he didn't come last night. Probably sleeping it off in a brothel somewhere."
"Again?" Gendry looked back at him with a raised eyebrow as they finally entered the gate area, and their pace slowed down to a crawl, moving only a single step every few minutes. "How much is he raking in to go there so often?"
"At least 10 stags every single night." The baker spread all his fingers wide to show him the amount. "And even more if he was called to one of those bigger taverns. The bastard is so popular these days that he is being paid in advance before even playing anything."
"Advance?!" Gendry was flabbergasted, unable to understand the concept of it. "What if he runs away and doesn't come?"
"He won't; he earns a lot more than that from the tips." The baker looked green with envy. "That's not all; he was bragging a few days ago that a noble maiden who happened to be passing liked his song so much that she threw him a gold dragon."
"A dragon?!" Gendry stopped dead for a few seconds before the pressure from the crowd forced him forward again. "Y-You could buy a fine piece of second-hand armour with that. Why would anyone throw that money away just because they liked a song one could listen to for free?" he asked anxiously, as if it were his own money.
"We shall never understand the world of the rich, my friend," he patted his arm with a sagely expression.
"This is not working. Gendry, raise your hands, and use your size to push through, or else we will be stuck here, and the games will be all over."
"Ugh! Fine!"
"Push!"
..
.
After an excruciatingly long struggle, the two finally managed to squeeze out of the crowd at the gates.
Their view widened as they caught sight of the stands in the distance.
"Finally. Let's hurry to find our usual place. Maybe the seats haven't been occupied—"
"What the fuck's that?"
Gendry stopped in his tracks to stare wide-eyed at the strange gathering in the distance, near the Blackwater Rush.
Dozens of massive white tents were put up in a circle, and through their midst he caught sight of at least a hundred columns of smoke rising into the sky, clearly from food being cooked.
And if that wasn't strange enough, hundreds of grain sacks had been piled up at the entrance, high enough to form a mountain taller than the tents, surrounded by dozens of armed men guarding it vigilantly.
"Oh, I heard about this from my uncle,"
The baker stopped beside him, and they weren't the only ones who noticed, as this strange sight had attracted the attention of most of the passersby heading towards the Tourney grounds. "Apparently ships have been constantly hauling grain into the port over the past two, and then labourers were hired round the clock to carry all these goods here."
"But what for?"
"Open kitchen, I guess..."
"As if." Gendry rolled his eyes. "This is enough to feed thousands upon thousands of people, probably almost everyone who arrived for the tourney, and more. No one rich enough to do this would be that generous."
"Maybe it's the King then. Perhaps he is happy and feels like giving away food to the poor."
"The King?" Gendry scoffed. "Don't be absurd. He'll hold a thousand more tourneys and feasts before he ever thinks of the poor."
"Then, maybe they are just going to sell the food," he shrugged. "They probably believe that everyone would be hungry after the Tourney ends, and decided they could earn a good penny from the crowd."
"And they decided to sell porridge?" Gendry shook his head. "And most smallfolk would stay hungry for a week, and walk home rather than pay someone else for food."
"Then, I don't know." He raised his hands in surrender, while glancing towards the stands. "Forget about it. We will know what it is for soon enough when the Tourney ends."
"Hm." Gendry nodded as he followed after his friend, but for some reason, something about the men around those tents stood out to him.
'Did I see wrong, or were they all Northerners?'
///