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They hardly ever got to come to one of Mother’s suppers. They were too little. Father and her brothers always had to go, and they always complained they had to look “pretty” although none of them were pretty. Girls were pretty, and they were all boys!
She’d only been to one of Mother’s suppers so far, at Winterfell. A very important southron lord had come to visit and Mother said Cat should come to supper because the southron lord had a little daughter too, and they could talk. But then the other girl wouldn’t even try to climb the heart tree with them, and she didn’t want to see the kennels at all! Cat didn’t like that girl one bit and then at the supper she sat clear at the other side of the other end of the table so they couldn’t talk anyway.
Mother said that was called protocol but she was meant to talk nicely with the girl before and after supper, but she didn’t, because she really couldn’t think of a thing to say to her.
Anyway, that supper was memorable because the southron lord, who was quite fat, said “Lady Stark fields a better army at her high table than most Lords field in a generation.”
Which was quite strange, because the only people at the big table were Father and Clegane and Tully and Jon and Rob and Rickard and Brandon, and the fat southron lord and his family. And that wasn’t an army, those were her brothers and some visitors.
So she asked Father about it the next evening and he said, “Cat, that is what is known as bul--flattery. That’s flattery, and it’s a dangerous kind of falsehood. If you ever meet a man who says you are beautiful and can’t tell you any other thing about you that’s true, you don’t let him lay a finger on you, promise?”
And she promised even though she didn’t really understand.
But this supper was in King’s Landing, and it was just the Starks, and not even their Targaryen second cousins or any of the other Northern families, and that was because tomorrow Father would ride off with Gane and Tull and leave them with Uncle Jon’s army. They’d be gone a long time. It would be very strange to only have four brothers around instead of six. There had always been two, four, six brothers.
And they were taking Black and Red with them too, because even though the army did want Gane and Tull and didn’t want two half-grown dire wolves, no one could figure out how to make the wolves stay or go anywhere they didn’t want to stay or go.
Uncle Jon said he thought they would range north on their own, eventually, especially when they were ready to mate. Cat nodded gravely when she heard that. She knew all about mating because her father mated horses to make new better horses, and her mother’s dogs sometimes went into “heat” and broke out of their kennels and ran off to mate with regular dogs in Wintertown or sometimes they even went into the woods to find wolves. It was funny to hear something called heat when everyone knew they were in the cold north.
Cat thought maybe since they wouldn’t be feeding so many dire wolves now, they would be able to afford a pony for her and her sisters. She knew that her brothers had started riding at Ellie’s age and yet Father didn’t let her or her sisters anywhere near the stables. She knew very well that was because Father raised dangerous warhorses who might kick her in the head and make it soft, but there were many kinds of horses in the world and all she wanted was one gray Dornish pony.
Just one!
Father had dozens and dozens of warhorses. A little gray pony would hardly be any more trouble, and she would curry her coat and brush her mane every day, the same way Mother brushed her hair and Lee’s and Ellie’s.
She had an idea that maybe if he said yes, they could go to the big horse market before they left King’s Landing and look for a good, pretty filly to take back North.
So tonight was their last big supper with everyone, and Cat was very excited. She’d seen the table before she’d been sent off with Nurse to put on her new lavender dress, and Mother and Father and Gane and Tull’s places all had the tall cups that looked like flowers with long stems.
It was good when Mother or Father drank from those kind of cups.
It was usually Father, and if he refilled it after he drank the first one, it was almost always a lovely night, because after supper he would sit by the fire and let positively anyone sit on his lap: her, Lee, Ellie, one of the dogs or even Mother! (The dogs were never supposed to be inside, except they always were if they were pregnant or just had puppies or were sick or if they had done something very good like bite someone. Well, they weren’t supposed to bite anyone, but one time a dog called Viserion bit someone and then she and Mother and Ellie and Lee stayed alone upstairs with Viserion and another dog for almost two whole days and when Father finally came back she saw that he had taken Heartsbane with him, which was odd because he almost never used Heartsbane and he always said it was for the boys to fight over now--the rule was that if you could take it was yours--and during all that time everyone said Viserion had been a very good dog. So sometimes biting could be good.)
But it was even better if Mother drank from one of those cups. She hardly ever did, but Cat liked it very much when, once in a very rare while, she let the steward pour.
Cat had a secret that she’d never told anyone, not even her sisters.
On the nights when Mother drank what Father drank, Cat found herself with the queerest, warmest feeling. It was a soft, cozy sort of feeling that reminded her of how she felt if Mother let them sleep in the big bed when Father went away, or when Brandon read them stories, or any time when Father smiled.
And then sometimes, if Mother drank a second cup of what Father drank, Cat saw the most interesting pictures in her mind. A lot of them were pictures of Father without a shirt, which wasn’t so very interesting, but she did feel that perhaps that explained why sometimes people called him Hound, because he was quite furry, so he must remind them of a poorly groomed hound.
But she also saw a Winterfell that was definitely Winterfell but not the same Winterfell as right now! The towers were all different, and one of them was ruined at the top, and sometimes the dire wolf statues hadn’t their heads! And she saw boys she knew were brothers but that were not any of her brothers. Sometimes she even saw a little boy who looked like Uncle Jon except he was always sitting in the dark below the salt, which couldn’t be, because Uncle Jon was King, and kings sat above the salt.
“Hold on, dear, let me finish this last tie right here,” said Nurse, and then she lined them all up by size, big to little, and fidgeted with their hair bows, and told them take each other’s hands to make a chain from Nurse down to Ellie, and said, “Let’s go, my good girls.”
And then they were sent in to sit at the big dining room in their fine quarters in the New Keep, and Nurse settled them in their chairs (too big). Ellie had to stand up in hers because otherwise she couldn’t reach the food on the table.
Mother smiled then, and yes, that was the beginning of it, that queer lovely warm feeling around her heart.
Was Mother already down to the bottom of her first stem-cup? They were still eating the frumenty!
"It's another version of 'give yourself a handicap or someone else will choose one for you,' " said Father. They were talking how Brandon had killed the two men who had tried to steal their horses.
Her brothers had been somewhere outside Maidenpool traveling to cousin Naerys’ wedding when Brandon had gone out to “check on the horses” because everyone knew that Brandon didn't like being around too many people for too long, and he’d come upon horse thieves.
The men had already put a blind over the whole head of Tull’s horse Angry Squirrel (Father had named him that when he was a colt because he reminded him of Aunt Arya), and they were trying to do the same to Brandon’s own horse Oakheart and getting their fingers bitten for their trouble!
Brandon had no choice but to intervene and then they’d pulled out short swords and Brandon had to kill them.
Her brothers had taken the thieves' bodies to Lord Montoon straightaway to explain themselves, and Lord Montoon said the bodies they brought him were the bodies of known brigands who had evaded his own troops for months. Brandon got a big reward and everything, and he said they would split it six ways because even though he’d been the one to wield the sword it was really his brothers who were the proper killers and he’d have been dead by the outlaw's blade if not for what they'd taught him.
That part was true enough: Nobody ever thought Brandon would ever actually kill anybody.
Nurse said she thought he’d been as sure a bet for a maester's chain as any Stark would ever be.
And yet here he was, killing people at ten-and-three, which was only one year past when Father started killing people back in his day.
But right now her brothers were arguing about something called double-wielding, because Brandon had been practicing with his left hand and he’d gotten in the habit so much that he’d killed the first outlaw using his left, but he couldn’t kill the second like that because the outlaw was wearing mail and his strikes weren’t penetrating, so then he’d had to switch back to his right.
“You’ll always be a bit slower and weaker on your off-hand, the balance is so different and you have to account for that readjustment work,” yelled Tull.
“But if you trade off constantly you won’t have an off-hand,” argued Small Jon.
“We’re probably too old now,” shouted Ned. “We all should have taken half a year each with our right hands tied down so we had to use our left.”
Her brother Ned was 14, so it didn’t seem to Cat like that was “too old” but maybe the rules are different for boys and swords?
And then Rickard yelled something (her brothers yelled as a matter of course, when they were talking amongst themselves about war stuff, or well, anything really) about something called the Sword of the Morning and double-wielding, and then Cat felt one of the pictures from Mother.
It was a man, and he was taking a great big sword out of a niche in a stone wall. The sword was very long, more like the ones her brothers wore on their backs than the ones they kept on their sword belts. It wasn’t Heartsbane, though. It looked even longer than Heartsbane, and the sheath was a wolf pelt, not a strong wooden scabbard made from bird’s-eye maple like Heartsbane had.
She looked over at Mother, who was stirring her frumenty with a spoon and looking at Gane in a way that meant she wasn’t really seeing him.
Father interrupted the boys, “If any of you can find someone to teach you to double-wield, I’ll pay for him to come here and teach you, but hell if I know of a man like that in all the Seven Kingdoms. Write to your aunt, if you must, and ask her to inquire with her old sellswords in Essos if they know of someone there.”
The stewards served a boar that came from the kingswood, and Father suggested a toast to Gane and Tull.
“You do it, Bird.”
Father always called Mother his bird when they were just with the family. When they were with other people he always called her “the Stark,” when she wasn’t standing right there, and then just “Stark” when she was.
Mother was supposed to be called Lady Stark and Cat always tried to tell Father that he forgot the first part, but Mother told her to never mind about it “because your father is constitutionally unable to say what he’s supposed to say.” Which seemed like a lot of words to explain that Father was naughty and made up his own rules.
The steward filled up allthe stem-cups and even put ones out for Ned and Jon and Rickard and Brandon. And then Ellie got down off her chair and sat on the floor and announced, “I’m not eating that boar no matter what you say because I know a boar is a pig that used to be alive.”
“That’s impeccable logic, girl,” said Father. “Chair.”
Ellie ignored him and laid herself out on the rug in what Nurse said was a “prostate position” but which was really just a kind of flop.
Mother peered under the table and said, “Darling, you’ll ruin your dress. Can you get back up and sit, or do you want to go finish your supper with Nurse?”
Ellie rolled over on her belly and started kicking her legs and singing, “Not gonna not gonna not gonna not gonna eat it, I know it was a wild pig. I know it.”
Father shrugged and raised his glass and toasted “to Elinor and her friends the boars,” and everybody drank, even Mother, and then Mother called for Nurse and Nurse came and took Ellie away.
Ellie was too little.
She was only just four, really still three, but Cat was six, and she knew how to behave at one of Mother’s suppers.
This was her chance, since Ellie had interrupted anyway!
“Father, Mother, excuse me, I have a very important proposition to make,” she said with great solemnity, the way grownups always talked when they were discussing boring things like building roads or what made for a good shipwright.
“She has a very important proposition, Father,” said Gane, who always looked out for her especially. The boys all angled their chairs toward her and put their elbows on the table which they were not supposed to do and looked like they really wanted to know her idea. Father did that thing he did with his mouth when he was trying not to smile.
Cat always thought that Father must believe that every time he smiled he took away a smile from someone else in the family, so he only did it when it was very important happiness, or else someone else would lose their chance.
“She wants a pony,” hollered Lee, giving away her secret like it was nothing. Every single person in this family except Mother yelled a lot.
“I want a King’s Landing pony! I want to go the horse market on Rosby Road and look for a gray-and-white dapple pony, just our house colors! Aunt Dany told me that her blood riders all learned to fight on horseback at four and I don’t even want to fight on horseback I just want to learn to trot properly and I’m six!”
“She’s six, Father, six,” said Tull.
Father defended himself: “I never said she couldn’t have a pony--might be time; could be--but hell if I think we need to pay King’s Landing prices for some worn-out nag.”
And then all the boys started yelling about horses and Lee took the spoon out of the relish pot and showed Cat that it had a tiny horse at the end and they both smiled because that must be a good omen, and then she got that funny feeling that came over her sometimes when she was near Mother.
Except this time it wasn’t just a picture, it was Mother’s voice singing a bit of a song that Cat had never heard before, and the picture was very dark and soft around the edges but everything was also green, and there were two riders on a big black horse that was galloping ever so fast and the horse looked just like one of Father’s warhorses. “He was the first who had opened her thighs, oh oh, glorious Florian, run from thousands of lies, to the happiest day of their lives.”
When Cat looked over at Mother, Mother was looking at all of her children one by one and she looked happy and sad at the same time, and then she drank down everything that was left in her stem-cup.
Cat heard something that sounded like wagon wheels on cobblestones and she saw a sword falling in front of a great cheering crowd and then a blond boy in a garden using a sword like an anvil hammer, to cut open a book.
Even she knew that only a fool would hold a sword like that. And who would cut up a book with a sword?
“Cat! Cate-lyn!” she realized Small Jon was yelling her name because she’d not been listening, and yet she felt strangely angry and she wanted to hunt down that boy and she tried to find him, and then Mother looked right in her eyes and tilted her head oddly and gripped the edge of the table, and Cat thought better of it.
Small Jon was smiling. They were all smiling.
“Catch,” said Brandon. And he tossed her a little bag that made a jangling sound and she opened it and there were coins inside. She realized it was Brandon’s reward from the Montoons for killing the brigands. She gasped and showed it all to Lee, and Lee poured it all out right there on the table. She and Lee counted the coins out together, and the steward took away the carved-up carcass of the roast boar and brought out four chicken pies with the Stark wolf sigil cut into the pastry on the top.
She and Lee just kept looking at each other in amazement.
Lee finally swallowed hard and asked, “What’s it for? Is it really for us?”
Brandon puffed up like a wild pheasant posturing for a mate--there was that word again, mate--and he said that it was for their pony from the horse market on Rosby Road, and she and Lee just gasped and smiled in happiness and awe.
“But there are rules! Listen!” said Father (yelling a little). “You let me decide which pony. It’ll be a gray-and-white filly as you say, but if there’s nothing worth buying, we’ll buy nothing. And don’t get your hearts set on some beaten-down 10-year-old cart horse called Tulip, because we won’t buy that either. You’ll learn to get your seat right on Old Bonney before you ever take the reins on this new one. And you have to share because we’re not getting three ponies, and that’s final."
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” she squealed at Father and Brandon and all of her big, big brothers.
“Oh, Cat, let’s name it Unicorn!” yelled Lee and she stood up on her chair and spun in a circle before collapsing back down.
“Yes! Unicorn!” Oh, that was the perfect name!
At the end of the table, Father covered his face with both of his hands so that you could only see his scars where his hair was missing and the graying bit next to that place on the other side that he rubbed whenever they got a letter from Aunt Arya. (Mother said Arya was his first daughter before us and her traveling around with the Ironborn made his head hurt.)
“I was going to toast our boys, our sons,” said Mother, standing up and drawing their eyes away from Father.
Cat peeked back just the same. He had put his hands down, and he was smiling at her and Lee, a very nice gentle smile that was different from his smile when he thought someone was being foolish.
She knew Unicorn was a good name for their pony!
And then the steward filled everyone’s stem-cups again except hers and Lyanna’s--they still drank goat’s milk with honey--and put the dessert trays on the sideboard. Mother said, “That will be all, thank you,” which meant that the stewards should leave the room now and close the door.
Mother looked at Gane and Tull, looking fine with their usually bristly faces shaved clean and their hair brushed. They had their good leathers on, but soon they would stop wearing those and put on the uniform armor of Uncle Jon’s army.
Mother inhaled and exhaled and said, “To my wonderful sons. I have been honored to know you since you were born. I remember holding you both that first night and you were already so dear to me, and I knew just from the way you cried and moved that being your mother would my greatest privilege. That hasn't ever changed. Remember you are Starks, and although I will pray that the Kings of Winter watch over you, know that I know that you are already men to make the North proud. Trust yourselves. Take care of each other. I love you both so much,” and then Mother raised her stem-cup and made a little choking sound, and her eyes filled with tears. And then every one of them looked at Father, because Father always got so angry when Mother cried--he couldn’t abide her tears--and they thought he was going to yell, and they were waiting for it, but he looked just the same as she did!
Cat saw Father then, with a great bushy winter beard, and he was holding a little baby with lots of wet black hair and it was naked and had blood and slime on it and a shiny blue rope was hanging down over Father’s arm, and then a woman came and gave Father a swaddled baby with black hair and took the other naked baby away.
And the Father that was here right now, swirled around his drink in the cup and blinked a lot, and then drank it all right down.
He glared at Clegane and Tully, and they both sat up straighter, and she did too, although she didn’t want to sit here anymore because it had been so long already.
“Do not stick your di--do not court anyone your Lady Mother would not be proud to know. For that matter, don’t court anyone Arya wouldn’t like. If you think of marrying, think of the snows and if she’s someone you want to live with all winter for the rest of your life. And if you had a child who was exactly like the other person, would you be pleased or not?”
Tull snorted, and Gane raised an eyebrow. Her oldest brother Clegane Stark was going to be Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North someday and so he had to be very wise about making someone his wife, because she would be his Lady and an important person. It was a very grave responsibility.
Cat wondered how much longer until supper was over.
She didn’t like this chair anymore, so she got up without asking to be excused even though she wasn’t supposed to, and she went down to Father’s chair and climbed up over the armrest into his lap.
She usually sat in Mother’s lap, but she could do that any old time. She could feel Mother from over here anyway, and Father was being very soft tonight instead of prickly like he usually was. Besides, Lee wanted to sit with Mother that night because she was ever so sad that her best friend Tully was leaving and Mother usually helped with feelings like that.
She liked that when Father kept talking she could feel a rumbling next to her ear.
“Be friendly and kind to strangers, like your mother is. Your friends will keep you alive if anything can. And the North is not the world. You will learn that most people live very differently than you do, so accept that with grace if you can. Your mother has mollycoddled you awfully--”
Cat got a feeling that looked like a lightning bolt.
“--and you’re rich, spoiled high-borns, know that, and it can’t be helped, but just as you’re no more than anyone else, you’re also not less. Don’t apologize for who you are, and don’t let anyone give you any shit.”
“Sandor! Must you?”
“Yes. I must. They’re half-asleep anyway.”
And then she tried to wake up because she didn’t want this supper to be over quite yet.
She eyed all the desserts on the sideboard and Small Jon reached over and grabbed two of the trays and Little Ned took the other two, and her brothers cut through them like locusts in a garden.
She never ate sweets because Mother never did, but her brothers were always ever so hungry.
Mother said she was going to have to raise the taxes just to keep her sons fed, but Cat thought that she was just being funny in her way that wasn’t as funny as Father’s way, because whenever the Iron Bank man came to visit he was ever so solicitous.
Cat had the idea that he was being nice because Mother kept a lot of coins in the Iron Bank.
And then there was a taste in her mouth like sour and sweet and...yellow? And she saw birds. Black birds, and carousels of starlings spinning and swooping, and gyrfalcons and eagles and mockingbirds, and little insect-eating mountain birds that made a sound like a click-peep as they visited one tree after another in a dreary godswood.
There was a castle hanging from the sky, and a little man with a little moustache.
And then she was looking through a tarnished mirror, and Father and Aunt Arya were there, too, but they were both younger. She heard “greedy” and a profane thing Father was never supposed to say, and then Father took the man by the hair and held him still and cut his throat, and there was ever so much blood, like when Rup butchered the hoggets or culled the meanest ganders.
She heard what she was sure was Aunt Arya’s laugh, long and triumphant, even though she’d only met Aunt Arya twice. It sounded like she was standing in an empty sept, because the sound echoed and echoed.
Yes, that sour and sweet and yellow taste in her mouth was something foul, and she didn’t like it one bit.
And then she realized she’d been sleeping, because she was awake again, a little, because someone had banged on the table and all the knives rattled on the plates and the noise woke her up.
“Winter is coming,” said Mother, quietly.
“Oh, is it?” asked Father, in his voice that he used when he didn’t believe what you were saying was true.
“I can feel it more surely every day,” she said.
“But what does it matter anyway? The Others are gone,” said one of her brothers but with her eyes closed she didn’t know which one because they all sounded the same. Even Brandon and Rickard’s voices were rumbly now.
“Winter is hard, boy, even if the dead aren’t riding,” said Father. How could the dead ride a horse? Dead things were still.
She tucked her head closer into Father’s arm and he pulled her tight and petted her hair down to her neck with his hand that almost the size of her head. He smelled nice, like soap, but she liked his usual smell better, because he usually smelled like warmth and leather and vinegar and metal.
Did metal have a smell? A taste? She thought it did, and she saw a picture that tasted like metal which was not usually how Mother’s pictures tasted.
The picture looked like a window in a sept almost, because it had black edges around all the people. She saw three children--gingers like her!--and a mother who was going to have another baby soon. She didn’t know those people, and she didn’t understand how the taste of something called verdigris came to be on her tongue.
Winter is coming. Those were her house words.
She heard the boys break into the chorus of “The Dornishman’s Wife.” Everyone in this family really was so loud.
She felt Father her pick her up and her head was on his shoulder and his beard tickled her nose.
And then Nurse was there and fussing, and Father said “Fuck the dress, leave her be,” and then she felt him kiss her hair. She felt Mother kiss her cheek and kiss Lyanna’s forehead and pat Elinor's bum because Ellie always slept curled up with her bum in the air, ever since she was a baby.
There was a picture of Father pulling his tunic over his head in a room that was dark except for two candles.
She was warm, and her sisters were there beside her. What a good supper that was, and tomorrow she might meet her pony, if Father found one that was good enough.
She couldn’t wait to get home and show her tree their Unicorn.
Tree was a very good listener, just like Mother, and sometimes, just like Father, it even told her important, very serious things she would need to know...someday.